Iranian negotiators were in Doha on Sunday for a third consecutive day of talks with Qatari mediators aimed at a deal to end the US-Israeli war on Iran, an official briefed on the discussions said. The Qatari mediators had spent more than 12 hours in Tehran on Friday before the talks moved to Doha on Saturday, in regular contact with Washington throughout.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that the talks with the Qatari mediators were ongoing and progressing, that Tehran was prepared for both defence and diplomacy, and that discussions of a two-day proposal were continuing without a final conclusion. Under the approach being discussed, the United States would lift sanctions on a shortened timetable and release more than 6 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets, after which Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin nuclear talks. Iran has cut the implementation gap it originally proposed from seven days to two, a change intended to remove the window in which either side might reconsider.
The American signals point in two directions at once. President Trump has said the United States will not launch new attacks before Tuesday’s midterm elections and, according to reporting on his Saturday call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to give diplomacy more time, while also saying on Saturday that Iran still had one or two sites the United States could deal with in 10 minutes and describing the Iranians as not very reliable negotiating partners. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that Trump had not decided whether to launch new strikes and would prefer to resolve the conflict diplomatically.
Tehran is hedging the same way. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Saturday ordered the armed forces to be prepared for any attack, and Iran has repeated that it would respond to new attacks by striking US and Israeli targets in neighbouring countries. The United Arab Emirates envoy Anwar Gargash said another round of escalation would serve neither Iran nor its neighbours, while adding that Gulf states were prepared for the worst.
Oil fell about 3 percent on Monday as the talks continued. What would confirm a deal is a named US response to the two-day proposal and a dated reopening of the strait; what would end it is a resumption of strikes after the midterms, which the week-ahead calendar has flagged since before the weekend.