Trump says Iran talks will resume in Qatar after Gulf attacks
The president said U.S.-Iran talks are set for Tuesday in Doha, but Tehran has not confirmed participation after strikes in the Gulf.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
3 min read
President Trump said U.S. talks with Iran will restart Tuesday in Qatar, a claim Tehran has not confirmed after a weekend of strikes in the Gulf. The potential meeting matters because both sides are accusing each other of breaching a fragile ceasefire tied to an interim peace deal.
Trump wrote Monday on social media that Iran had asked for a meeting and that it would be held in Doha. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, quoted by Iranian media the same day, said consultations with Qatar were continuing but technical talks with the United States were not yet scheduled for this week and would happen only “when the conditions are met.”
A senior White House official who was not authorized to brief reporters told NPR on Sunday that technical talks on implementing the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding were “on track for the coming days as planned.” The official also said deconfliction channels were operating after talks in Switzerland two weeks ago.
Weekend strikes strain talks
The latest violence began Thursday, when Iran attacked a cargo ship near Oman, just outside the Strait of Hormuz, according to the account reported by NPR. U.S. Central Command said it then hit missile and drone sites on Iranian territory near the strait on Friday and Saturday in response to Iranian attacks on two cargo ships, including one carrying more than 2 million barrels of crude oil.
Iran said Sunday it launched missile counterstrikes against U.S. forces in Bahrain and Kuwait. Those are the same Gulf Arab countries Secretary of State Marco Rubio had visited days earlier to discuss U.S. security commitments and regional views on the interim deal with Iran, according to NPR.
Trump warned Iran on Sunday in a social media post that the United States could use more force. “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump wrote, adding that if that happened, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned Thursday that ships failing to coordinate passage with its naval forces would be treated as violators. NPR reported that Iran’s cargo-ship attacks disrupted U.N.-backed efforts to move thousands of seafarers through a route near Oman after months of war and the closure of the waterway.
Qatar’s role in the deal
Qatar and Pakistan mediated high-level U.S.-Iran talks in Switzerland two weeks ago. Pakistan and Qatar said after those meetings that Washington and Tehran had agreed to create a communication line to avoid incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, while Iranian officials said a deconfliction cell was set up to monitor a parallel ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Qatar also holds Iranian funds that Tehran says are frozen in bank accounts. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Monday in remarks carried by the Fars News Agency that $6 billion of the $12 billion held there would be released under the interim deal, alongside oil sanctions that Washington had already temporarily lifted.
Gharibabadi said Monday that he visited Oman to discuss the future management of the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said during a visit to Iraq a day earlier that commercial traffic through the strait is supposed to return to prewar levels within 30 days of the preliminary U.S.-Iran agreement, and he said the waterway is under Iran’s sole management.
Aragchi also said responsibility for removing what he called “obstacles” in the strait and reopening it rests with Iran. NPR reported that it was not immediately clear whether he was referring to mines the United States says Iran placed in the waterway during the war.
This story draws on original reporting from NPR.