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Seventeen months after the United States and Iran began negotiating a possible return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal abandoned by President Donald J. Trump, the European Union has presented a “final” proposal for the two sides to consider before the talks collapse for good, Western officials said.

The negotiations have carried on through many pauses, crises and threatened conclusions, and it is far from certain that the latest proposal represents a final chapter. But U.S. and E.U. officials say their patience has worn paper thin, as Iran steadily expands its nuclear program.

“What can be negotiated has been negotiated, and it’s now in a final text,” the E.U. foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell Fontelles, said Monday on Twitter.

U.S. officials have long warned that time is running out to reach an agreement. A State Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said the United States was “ready to quickly conclude a deal” and that the E.U. proposal was “the only possible basis” for it.

U.S. officials are skeptical that Iran is prepared to roll back its program in exchange for relief from sanctions that have weakened its economy. But some analysts say the sides have inched closer than had been expected.

In a notable shift, Iran has retreated from two key demands. One is an insistence that the United States remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from its official list of foreign terrorist organizations, according to people briefed on the negotiations and two Iranians familiar with the talks.

That demand became one of the final roadblocks to restoring the deal after President Biden refused to overturn the guards corps’ terrorist designation, issued in 2019 by Mr. Trump.

The other is an insistence that the Biden administration provide guarantees that a future president will not withdraw from the deal even if Iran upholds its commitments, as Mr. Trump did in 2018. The Iranians have come to accept that such a promise is not possible, according to the two Iranians.

“We are closer than we have been since the deal was all but done last May, before the talks suspended for the Iranian elections,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear policy expert who consulted closely with the Obama administration during talks to strike the original nuclear deal. “Bottom line: It could happen.”

Such a breakthrough would provide Mr. Biden with a foreign policy achievement as he heads into midterm elections in the fall, though some European officials say the American president may be wary of political criticism over renewing an Obama-era agreement that Republicans almost uniformly denounce and that even some key Democrats opposed in its original form.

Another factor is a fresh Iranian demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, drop a three-year investigation into unexplained man-made uranium at various Iranian research sites, including some that Tehran refuses to let I.A.E.A. inspectors visit. Iran vehemently denied that it had military intentions for enriched uranium.

“This is their style: moving toward an agreement but at the moment of agreement saying, ‘There’s just one more thing,’” Mr. Cirincione said.

The agency identified traces of uranium particles based on information uncovered in 2018, when Israeli agents stole thousands of documents and CDs about Iran’s nuclear program from a Tehran warehouse.

The stolen documents indicated that Iran had a military nuclear program until at least 2003, when the United States believes it ended. Israel remains unconvinced that it was shut down.

Iran has made dropping the investigation key to its approval of the nuclear deal, even though the I.A.E.A. is not a signatory to it and was not engaged in the negotiations.

The agency’s secretary general, Rafael M. Grossi, has also said that it would be difficult for the agency to restore with full confidence an assessment of where Iran is on enrichment because the country has banned the agency from replacing full memory cards and cameras for months, as part of its own effort to pressure the negotiators.

“Just like in 2015, it is very hard to delink Iran’s past from its future,” said Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who tracks the negotiations.

“Iran wants to close the I.A.E.A. investigations into its past as part of reviving the J.C.P.O.A.,” she added, using the abbreviation for the original agreement. “The West is not willing to drop the investigation.”

Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group, said that “what Iran gets wrong is that it can’t wish away the U.N. inspections doing their job.”

“What it needs to do is to come clean once and for all,” Mr. Vaez said. “The parties managed to resolve several issues, which is a positive development. But the fact that there is a single disagreement left doesn’t guarantee success.”

Even if finally signed, the new deal would take months to enact. Critics noted that even if Iran agreed to the enrichment limits in the original deal, the country has enough knowledge to build a nuclear weapon if it chose to do so, making it a “threshold state.”

Iran also does not accept that the current 35-page proposed agreement is a closing bid. Nour News, a news media outlet for the Supreme National Security Council, said on Tuesday that “naturally the Islamic Republic of Iran does not accept the current text as the final text.”

After Mr. Biden refused in the spring to lift the U.S. designation on the guard corps, Iran installed new advanced centrifuges in places deep underground and enriched uranium to 60 percent, which is close to weapons grade and not needed for any civilian use.

In Iran, many analysts doubt that a deal is within reach. Iran’s conservative government faces internal divisions, and hard-line factions distrust the West. Making key concessions also risks political backlash. Some conservative lawmakers have said any agreement that leaves the guards corps designated as a terrorist group is unacceptable.

But if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declines the current Western offer, Iran would probably not abandon the talks. Iran sees itself as holding leverage over a West eager for a deal that would bring more Iranian oil into a global economy strained by high energy prices, analysts said. But Ayatollah Khamenei is also eager to remove constricting sanctions.

Mr. Vaez said that if this attempt at an agreement fails, the West will have to start pondering more limited alternatives.

“They are then likely to explore alternative options, like an interim deal, against the backdrop of an intensified race of sanctions versus centrifuges,” Mr. Vaez said.

BEIJING — My generation of Chinese looked up to the United States.

When I was a university student in northwestern China in the late 1990s, my friends and I tuned in to shortwave broadcasts of Voice of America, polishing our English while soaking up American and world news. We flocked to packed lecture halls whenever a visiting American professor was on campus.

It was a thrilling time. China was emerging from isolationism and poverty, and as we looked to the future we studied democracy, market economics, equality and other ideals that made America great. We couldn’t realistically adopt them all because of China’s conditions, but our lives were transformed as we recalibrated our economy on a U.S. blueprint.

Decades earlier, a reform-minded scholar said that even the moon in the United States was rounder than in China. My schoolmates and I wanted to believe it.

But after years of watching America’s wars overseas, reckless economic policies and destructive partisanship — culminating in last year’s disgraceful assault on the U.S. Capitol ­­— many Chinese, including me, can barely make out that shining beacon anymore.

Yet as relations between our countries deteriorate, the United States blames us. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did so in May, saying that China was “undermining” the rules-based world order and could not be relied upon to “change its trajectory.”

I have misgivings about some of my country’s policies. And I recognize that some criticisms of my government’s policies are justified. But Americans must also recognize that U.S. behavior is hardly setting a good example.

The shift in Chinese attitudes wasn’t a given. But when U.S.-led NATO forces mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1999 during the Kosovo war, our idolizing of America began to wane. Three people were killed in that attack, and 20 were wounded. Two years later, a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet collided in the South China Sea, leaving a Chinese pilot dead. These incidents may have seemed relatively minor to Americans, but they shocked us. We had largely avoided foreign wars and were not used to our citizens dying in conflicts involving other countries. The shift in perception gained pace as the 2000s unfolded and more Chinese had televisions. We watched as the carnage of America’s disastrous involvement in Iraq, launched in 2003 on false pretenses, was beamed into our homes.

Following his predecessors, President Barack Obama announced a string of weapon sales to Taiwan and embarked on his so-called pivot to Asia, which we regarded as an attempt to rally our Asian neighbors against us. President Donald Trump declared a destructive trade war against us, and Chinese citizens were as shocked as anyone when a pro-Trump mob stormed the citadel of American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. The visit to Taiwan last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has only further disappointed many Chinese, who saw it as a violation of U.S. commitments on Taiwan.

China’s critics in the United States need to realize that American actions such as these are causing outcomes in China that even the United States doesn’t want.

It’s no accident that China’s military spending — a source of concern in Washington for years — began rising in the early 2000s after the Belgrade bombing and the plane collision. It quickly took off after the war in Iraq showcased how far ahead the U.S. military was compared with ours. China’s past weakness had been calamitous: Western powers attacked and forced China to surrender territory in the 1800s, and Japan’s brutal invasion in the 20th century killed millions.

U.S. officials no doubt want China to follow the American path of liberalism. But in contrast to my university days, the tone of Chinese academic research on the United States has shifted markedly. Chinese government officials used to consult me on the benefits of American capital markets and other economic concepts. Now I am called upon to discuss U.S. cautionary tales, such as the factors that led to the financial crisis. We once sought to learn from U.S. successes; now we study its mistakes so that we can avoid them.

The sense of America as a dangerous force in the world has filtered into Chinese public attitudes as well. In 2020 I remarked on a Chinese television program that we still have much to learn from the United States — and was attacked on Chinese social media. I stick to my view but am now more careful in talking positively about the United States. When I do, I preface it with a criticism.

Chinese students still want to study at U.S. universities but are acutely fearful of American gun violence, anti-Asian attacks or being labeled a spy. They are sent off with ominous advice: Don’t stray from campus, watch what you say, back away from conflict.

And despite Chinese weariness with our country’s tough zero-Covid policy, America’s dismal record on the pandemic has only strengthened Chinese public support for our government.

To be clear: China needs to change, too. It needs to be more open to dialogue with the United States, refrain from using U.S. problems as an excuse to go slow on reform and respond more calmly and constructively to American criticism on things like trade policy and human rights.

But although we don’t enjoy the same rights as Americans, many in China like where we are right now.

In the late 1970s, China was exhausted and traumatized from the destruction and hardship caused by the Cultural Revolution, which nearly destroyed us. Deng Xiaoping initiated reforms that brought stability and helped lift 800 million people out of poverty. We have achieved spectacular increases in income and life expectancy and stayed out of foreign wars. Tough firearm regulations allow us to walk down any street in the country at night with virtually no fear of harm. When we look at America’s enormous pandemic toll, gun violence, political divisions and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, it only reminds Chinese people of our own chaotic past that we have left behind.

None of this is meant to gloat over America’s troubles; a strong, stable and responsible United States is good for the world. China still has much to learn from America, and we have a lot in common. We drive Chinese-built Fords and Teslas, wash our hair with Procter & Gamble shampoos and sip coffee at Starbucks. Solving some of the planet’s biggest problems requires that we work together.

But that doesn’t mean following America over the cliff.

Wang Wen (@WangwenR) is the executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a think tank at Renmin University of China. He is the author of “A Great Power’s Long March,” an analysis of China’s re-emergence as a global power. He is a Communist Party member and a former chief opinion editor of The Global Times, an arm of the official Communist Party newspaper, The People’s Daily.

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SEOUL — At least seven people were killed as some of the heaviest rainfall in decades struck the Seoul area overnight, flooding homes, streets and subway stations, South Korean officials said on Tuesday.

Three of the dead, two sisters in their 40s and a 13-year-old girl, were found early Tuesday as emergency workers pumped out the water that had flooded their semi-basement home in southern Seoul. Another was a municipal employee, apparently electrocuted while removing a tree that had fallen onto a sidewalk, the police said.

In addition to the seven confirmed deaths, officials said six people were missing after floodwaters pulled them into manholes, underground passages or streams.

Nearly 17 inches of rain poured down in southern Seoul between early Monday and early Tuesday, roughly the same amount that falls in a typical summer month, weather officials said. In one district, 5.4 inches fell in a single hour, breaking an 80-year-old Seoul record.

More heavy rain was expected Tuesday in the capital area and in provinces east and south of it, the Korea Meteorological Administration said.

The flooding turned Seoul’s Monday evening rush hour into chaos. Some subway stations were closed, and drivers abandoned cars in the upscale Gangnam district as roads became impassable. Homes and other buildings experienced power outages.

Photos on social media showed commuters wading through waist-deep water, drivers stranded on car roofs and rainwater cascading down the steps of subway stations. Some of the images from Tuesday morning, after the floods receded, resembled a disaster movie, with cars strewn across city streets.

Hiking paths on the mountains around Seoul were closed on Tuesday, and the government issued alerts warning that landslides were possible. Businesses were urged to adjust their working hours so employees could avoid traffic jams and potential hazards.

President Yoon Suk-yeol, whose approval ratings have plummeted since he took office in May, said on Facebook that he had “ordered the related government agencies to evacuate people from dangerous areas to avoid human casualties.”

North Korea has also been hit by heavy rainfall in recent weeks. Several bodies found in South Korea near the countries’ border last month were believed to be those of flood victims, swept downstream from the North, the South Korean police said.

In the past, flooding has also brought land mines from the North into the South. Officials warned South Koreans living near the border to exercise caution, saying that the North had released floodwaters from nearby dams.