IRAN’S top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential deal with the US to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said yesterday, after Washington and Tehran played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New Delhi earlier that the US would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before considering whether to deal with Iran in “another way”.
There was a “pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait (of Hormuz), get the strait open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off,” Rubio said.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social yesterday, US President Donald Trump said talks with Iran were going “nicely”, but warned of fresh attacks if they failed. It “will only be a Great Deal for all, or no Deal at all,” he wrote.
The official briefed on the Iranians’ Doha visit told Reuters the discussions focused primarily on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium while Iran’s central bank governor attended to discuss the potential release of frozen Iranian funds as part of a final deal.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier that nuclear issues would only be negotiated on if the framework accord is agreed first.
Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. Tehran has consistently denied it has plans to do that. The two sides remain at odds on several other issues, such as Israel’s war in Lebanon with the Iranian-backed Hizbollah and Tehran’s demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
As efforts to reach a deal continued yesterday, Iran said it had downed a “hostile” stealth drone using a new air defence system, Iranian news agencies reported, without saying where it had come from.
“This is a sign from us that no more stealth drones can penetrate the skies of the Persian Gulf,” Fars quoted unnamed officials as saying.
Potentially complicating the Lebanon track in later talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday Israel would intensify strikes against Hizbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s military soon thereafter said it was attacking Hizbollah infrastructure in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley and several other areas.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire in mid-April, but Israel has continued air strikes it says are acts of self-defence against Hizbollah, which was not party to the truce.
Baghaei said the potential Iran deal contained no specific details on management of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied gas usually flows.
Iran will not charge tolls for ships to pass through but there will be a cost for services offered such as navigation and steps to protect the environment, he said, under a protocol to be agreed with Oman, which lies on the opposite shore of the waterway.
Citing a Middle East diplomatic source, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported the US and Iran were discussing a plan to open the strait about 30 days after reaching a deal to end hostilities.
Iran would then clear mines from the strait during a 30-day window, after which ships from all countries could navigate freely and safely, Nikkei reported.
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