Indirect talks between the United States and Iran aimed at ending the seven-month-long war continue – most recently via Qatar as mediator on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York – but the two sides still disagree about the agenda.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday after telling state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) that he expects an official response to Tehran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the end of the day. The proposal, which Iran said would see the strait reopened within seven days, was first passed to the US via Qatari mediators last week.
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United States President Donald Trump was reported to have rejected that offer, under which Tehran would reopen the strait in return for Washington lifting its naval blockade, waiving sanctions, releasing an estimated $۱۲bn in frozen Iranian assets and enforcing a wider regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon.
Under Iran’s proposal, wider peace talks, including discussions of its nuclear programme, would begin only then
Despite Trump’s public rejection, Araghchi says he has not yet received a formal response from Washington. Meanwhile, US media reports that Trump may well be willing to relax sanctions and unfreeze Iranian assets have been strongly denied by the US president.
Instead, US officials say, the US wants a deal that resolves all outstanding issues, particularly Tehran’s nuclear programme, in one go, rather than pursuing a gradual, step-by-step approach.
Here’s what we know about the talks:
Qatari mediators met Araghchi in New York on Monday to discuss how to advance Tehran’s proposal for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and then progressing to wider peace talks.
In a post on Telegram, Araghchi insisted that the talks focused solely on the Strait of Hormuz. He denied that the US had formally rejected the Iranian proposal.
“Despite what the US president said, I said that we were waiting for the official US response through the mediators … They [Qatar] had ideas, and we discussed them. They are going to raise this issue with the American side again, and then the final response from the American side will be conveyed to us through the Qatari mediator,” Araghchi said late on Monday.
Araghchi also said negotiations had become more “serious”, but cautioned that Tehran’s position has not changed.
“I state firmly that there has been no change in Iran’s position. Our conditions for opening the strait are clear. Our position on other issues is also clear. At present, there has been no discussion at all about flexibility,” he added.
Tehran’s proposal includes elements of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MoU), which was signed by both the US and Iran on June ۱۷.
Is Trump willing to accept some Iranian demands?
A US official told The Associated Press news agency last week that Trump is not willing to make a final peace deal with Iran until the issue of its nuclear programme is addressed. According to the official, who has not been named, the US president would be willing, however, to grant Iran sanctions relief and release some frozen funds if progress is made on the nuclear file.
Then, on Monday, US-based news outlet Axios also reported that Trump had offered Iran sanctions relief in return for concessions on its nuclear programme. The report also cited US officials, one of whom told Axios that the indirect talks had been “positive and constructive”, adding that Tehran had indicated it was “flexible” on nuclear issues.
Trump, however, angrily denounced the story as a “hoax” in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns. He said the story was “not true” and demanded Axios remove the article.
Iran has been heavily sanctioned for decades. The restrictions have severely affected Iranians’ quality of life, including their access to essential medicines and healthcare.
In August, the US announced yet more sweeping economic sanctions on Iran and countries that trade with it as it sought to apply more economic pressure to isolate the country from the global economy during the diplomatic deadlock in their war.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the campaign as the “economic asphyxiation” of Iran.
It is difficult to quantify exactly how many Iranians have been killed by what Tehran views as “economic warfare”. However, a study published last year by the highly regarded medical journal The Lancet Global Health concluded that more than ۵۶۴,۲۵۰ people worldwide die annually as a result of US sanctions.
What does the US want?
In late February, just before the US launched its first strikes on Iran, the two sides were already holding talks hosted by Oman, which included the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme.
But before those talks could conclude, the US and Israel launched strikes, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas is shipped in peacetime, by Iran. The closure of the strait has since become the primary point of contention between the two sides, when it had not been an issue before the war began. The strait is currently subject to blockades by both sides.
Throughout the war, Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to strike a deal with Tehran. However, serious differences between the two sides will need to be resolved first, including the order in which issues are addressed for the purpose of peace talks.
Iran wants to establish its control of the Strait of Hormuz, have sanctions lifted and assets unfrozen, as well as ensure an end to US-Israeli strikes before it will go back to negotiating other issues, such as its nuclear programme. This was the order of events laid out in the MoU agreed between Iran and the US in June, but which quickly fell apart.
The US, however, wants everything to be on the table at the same time – it does not want to agree to anything relating to these Iranian demands before it addresses the other issues.
Scott Lucas, professor of US politics and international relations at University College Dublin, told Al Jazeera that Washington effectively wants Iran to surrender.
“The Strait of Hormuz has become a fundamental issue. The question here is, will both sides give? The memorandum of understanding clearly gave Iran a role in the management of the strait,” Lucas said.
“When the Trump administration pulled away from negotiating on the basis of the memorandum, they effectively went back to the idea of Iran having to completely allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz with no guarantees over it, in terms of not only what it means for Iran financially, but [also] in terms of Iranian security. The Iranian government is not going to agree to that, so we’re stuck in this limbo right now,” he added.
“Are the Trump folks going to come back to the talks on the basis of the memorandum of understanding or something that is a revised version of it, or are they going to try and break the government with economic warfare until at least after the US elections in November? That’s where we are right now.”
What does Iran want?
After half a century of bitter enmity with Washington, Iran wants to consolidate what it sees as the strategic gains it has made during a war it did not start. This specifically includes its newly established ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, sending global energy markets into a tailspin and placing additional pressure on the Trump administration.
Since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February ۲۸, Hormuz has dominated talks aimed at ending the war and emerged as Tehran’s greatest point of leverage. Prior to the conflict, Iran did not exert control over the waterway and all commercial shipping passed through freely.
For this reason, Iran will not move on to wider peace talks until it has leveraged its control of the strait to get its demands met. “Our discussion is clear. Right now, it is only about the Strait of Hormuz,” Araghchi said late on Monday.
“The opening of the Strait of Hormuz is also subject to the fulfilment of a series of conditions that we announced to the other side.”
Ali Salehian, director of the Center for Intellectual Diplomacy at the Governance and Policy Think Tank in Iran, told Al Jazeera that Tehran does not believe Washington will honour any future deal as it did not honour what was agreed under the Pakistan-brokered June MoU.
“For Iran, the bottom line of every negotiation with Trump, considering all of his misbehaving and [military] targeting of Iran during negotiations, is the Islamabad MoU,” Salehian said.
“Tehran thinks that if the US doesn’t fulfil its commitments based on the MoU, there is no guarantee that any kind of future deal would be sustainable.”
What is likely to happen next?
It does not look likely that the diplomatic standoff will be eased anytime soon, analysts say.
Both the US and Iran have indicated throughout the war that they would prefer a diplomatic settlement to a continuation of the war. However, Trump has continued to threaten Iran with more strikes if it does not agree to a deal, and Araghchi told US news outlet NBC on Sunday that Tehran is also prepared to resume fighting, even though it has not abandoned diplomacy.
“We are fully prepared for the time for the war to be resumed, and I repeat, we stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even if it comes to a doomsday war,” he said.
Trump said last week that he expects a deal will be reached, but not until after the US midterms on November ۳.
“For the moment, the Trump administration is going to try to make the Iranian government capitulate through economic warfare,” Lucas said.
However, a deep sense of distrust remains between the two sides. Senior Iranian officials believe Trump will restart the war after the midterms on a far greater scale and that Israel would also participate.
If that theory proves true, Tehran may well prefer the fighting to resume before November’s elections, as it would allow Iran to impose a greater cost on Trump.
“The reaction of the Iranians to that might be to actually trigger the war themselves, early, right before the midterm elections in order to maximise the pain that [it] will impose on the US president,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera earlier this month.
