The semi-official Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) has quoted Iran's ambassador to Beijing, Mohammad Keshavarz Zadeh, as having said that "There are good news on the way about Sino-Iranian relations." However, the ambassador did not elaborate on the details.

This comes while Iran's nuclear program was discussed in an online meeting on Friday between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British, French and German counterparts.

"We just had a in-depth and important conversation on Iran ... to handle together nuclear and regional security challenges," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Twitter, adding other issues were also addressed.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price declined comment on the substance of the meeting, but said Washington wanted "to make sure that we are working in lockstep with our European partners" on Iran.

The high-level conversation was the latest step by President Joe Biden’s administration to revive the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran signed with world powers which was abandoned in 2018 by former President Donald Trump. The Biden team has emphasized that they want close consultations with allies and partners before making a move on the Iran issue.

Several Iranian officials including the Vice Speaker of the Iranian Parliament Amir Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, have reiterated during the past months that Iran's policies do not change with the changing of the guard in Washington.

Ghazizadeh has instead called on the Iranian government to follow the "look east" policy of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. During the past months, Iran has tried to compensate for the impact of the US sanctions by raising the possibility of a long-term strategic cooperation agreement with China.

Chinese officials have remained silent about the idea although the former speaker of Iran’s parliament Ali Larijani visited China last year in a bid to broker a deal. The Chinese apparently did not find a way around the US sanction that would facilitate trade with Iran whose economy is badly damaged by the sanctions and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

The statement by the Iranian ambassador to China might well be an attempt to revive the discussions about the controversial 25-yeare agreement with China in order to tell the US that Iran is not isolated in the world.

Meanwhile, other reports from Washington say members of President Joe Biden's National Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the Middle East. However, according to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki, no policy decisions are expected to be taken at the meeting.

"The focus is broadly on the Middle East. I'm sure Iran will be a part of the discussion," Psaki told a White House briefing, but added "It's not a decisional meeting." What is already known is that according to Psaki, Biden will not attend the meeting.

In a related development, an opinion piece by Bobby Ghosh in Bloomberg on Friday said Biden can break from both the Trump and Obama policies on Iran and map his own course for another deal with Iran.

According to Ghosh, although Biden has said very little about Iran and the new deal, his foreign policy and national security officials have ruled out an immediate American return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iranian officials often shift from the position of demanding a quick easing of the sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy, to reiterating that they are in no hurry to forge a deal with the US.

"While signalling a desire to return to diplomacy with Tehran, the likes of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have also made it clear they’re prepared to wait," wrote Ghosh.

Iranian officials including hardliners such as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and vice speaker of parliament Ghazizadeh have said on various occasions that US policy toward Iran has not changed with the change of Presidents at the White House during the past four decades, ignoring the fact that President Barack Obama concluded the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 while President Trump withdrew from it in 2018.