Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Monday that nuclear talks in Vienna cannot succeed unless the United States is prepared to lift "major" sanctions.

Reuters reported last week that a US-Iranian deal is taking shape in Vienna after months of indirect talks to revive a pact Washington abandoned in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump.

"The United States must prove its will to lift major sanctions," Raisi said in a joint news conference with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha.

"To reach an agreement, guarantees are necessary for negotiations and nuclear issues."

The draft text of the agreement also alluded to other issues, including unfreezing billions of dollars in Iranian funds in South Korean banks, and the release of Western prisoners held in Iran.

"Aggression is bound to fail. Resistance has brought results and none of the regional issues have a military solution," Raisi said.

Raisi was more cautious than Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh, who said earlier that the Vienna negotiations had made "significant progress".

Khatibzadeh also said that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" in the Vienna talks. "The remaining issues are the hardest," he told a weekly press briefing.

Khatibzadeh said that Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, handles the Vienna talks. It reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Reporting by Reuters