President Donald Trump has decided to engage in further negotiations with Iran, while simultaneously asserting that the truce between the two nations has officially ended.
Since last month, there have been no direct discussions between Iran and the United States.
Despite this, reports from Iranian media indicate that a delegation from Qatar, acting as a mediator, has arrived in Tehran following another exchange of strikes between the opposing sides this week.
Only three weeks have passed since the US and Iran signed a “memorandum of understanding” aimed at transforming a protracted ceasefire into lasting peace. The recent consecutive days of renewed hostilities threaten to escalate into full-scale regional conflict.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has requested that we resume ‘talks.’ While we have agreed to this, the United States has made it crystal clear that the ceasefire is no longer in place,” Trump stated on Truth Social on Saturday.
At a NATO summit this week, Trump initially declared the ceasefire over, saying of Iran: “It’s just a waste of time dealing with them.”
US and Iranian delegations have held one round of direct talks in Switzerland since signing their agreement, as well as indirect negotiations in Qatar.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will travel to Oman on Sunday for talks on bilateral relations and regional developments, particularly the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported.
Strait of Hormuz sticking point
The US is demanding Iran publicly state it will stop attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and that all lanes in the strait will be open to shipping with no tolls, senior US officials said on Saturday.
Iran has adamantly refused to give up control of the strait, the strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply typically flows.
US officials said conversations between the two countries had been productive in recent days. They made the comments to a small group of reporters in a conference call.
“They’re either going to give us that statement or we’re not having a good outcome for them,” one official said.
Iran has told the US that recent attacks on shipping in the strait were from “an errant part of their system,” one senior official said.
There appears to be a power struggle unfolding in real time between hardliners in Iran and pragmatists, another official said.
Three Qatari and Saudi commercial tankers came under fire this week, prompting the US to hit Iranian sites, and Iran to respond with strikes on US military sites in Gulf states.
The fundamental demand from the US side is that Iran turn over its nuclear materials. Iran is believed to possess more than 400kgs of highly enriched uranium, which Trump and other US officials refer to as “nuclear dust.”
The nuclear issue is supposed to be dealt with under the 60-day period for negotiations laid out in June’s memorandum of understanding.
“I just want to be clear here that if we don’t get the dust, we do not have a deal with Iran,” one official said.
The official said “we have a lot of options” if Iran refuses, including military and economic options.
Ramping up sanctions
The US issued new Iran-related sanctions on Saturday targeting a key financier for Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and 13 other individuals and entities, the US Treasury Department said.
The sanctions took aim at Ali Ansari, an Iranian banker and businessman based in Dubai who had previously been sanctioned by Britain for his role in financially supporting the activities of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other entities, Treasury said.
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also targeted three Iran-based exchange houses and foreign “front companies” that it said moved billions of dollars annually on behalf of sanctioned Iranian banks, using layers of shell companies to obscure the government’s illicit activity.
The sanctions were announced on a day of relative calm after a week of renewed conflict.
Iran has said it is ready for “all-out defence” if the US violates the memorandum of understanding. Its top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, vowed on Telegram that the war would never end with Iran’s surrender.
— With additional reporting from the Agence France-Presse news agency.