Iran is pursuing two intertwining goals in its negotiating strategy with the U.S., say Iranian officials and Arab mediators: securing financial relief for an economy that is under severe strain without giving enough ground on its nuclear program to allow President Trump to claim victory.
Iran mostly shook off an overnight skirmish with U.S. forces in which it lost several Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fighters, staying at the negotiating table on Tuesday. Tehran has been seeking economic relief by regaining control of some of the $100 billion in assets frozen by the West and regaining access to world oil markets, these officials say.
Late Monday, U.S. Central Command struck Iranian speedboats it said were laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran retaliated by firing on U.S. planes, and the U.S. hit back at missile-launch sites in Iran.
The exchange of fire followed mixed signals from Trump over the weekend. After saying on Saturday that a deal with Tehran was largely negotiated , the president appeared to change course amid criticism of the outline of the deal from some Senate Republicans.
Iran signaled that strikes wouldn’t derail negotiations. Tehran’s top negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf , remained in Qatar on Tuesday for talks after arriving a day earlier. The officials said Iran delayed announcing that several members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been killed in the strike to keep the talks on track.
Ghalibaf had arrived in the Gulf country a day earlier to address sticking points, including the frozen Iranian funds and details about reopening the strait, the officials said. Ghalibaf returned to Tehran later Tuesday after consultations with Qatari officials, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported.
Iran’s resistance to dismantling its nuclear program has been one of the central points of contention in talks. Trump spent the weekend touting advancements in negotiations while the U.S. and Iran remain far apart on the key issues. He appeared to walk back his demand that Iran hand over remaining enriched uranium to the U.S., saying he preferred Iran destroy or hand over the nuclear material to another country.
Some U.S. officials said Trump was responding in real time to talks and proposals passed back and forth to demonstrate progress in the face of Republican criticism of the diplomatic efforts.
In a further sign that Iran wants to keep talking, its president, Masoud Pezeshkian , discussed efforts to reach a memorandum of understanding between Tehran and Washington in a phone call Tuesday with Abdel Fattah Al Sisi , president of Egypt, one of the mediating countries.
Mediators expressed concern that hard-line elements in Iran are trying to sabotage any peace agreement by carrying out covert operations against maritime traffic.
Three Revolutionary Guard boats were seen in the southern part of the strait on Tuesday, according to satellite imaging analyzed by maritime artificial-intelligence company Windward. A tanker was hit by an explosion in the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday, according to the Royal Navy-affiliated U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, in an area where Iran has frequently attacked commercial ships.
Iran said Tuesday it would retaliate for the U.S. strike, which it called a violation of the cease-fire between both sides. “Without a doubt, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation,” Iran’s foreign ministry said.
And Iranian regime hard-liners also reiterated their criticism of diplomacy. Majid Moosavi , the Revolutionary Guard commander in charge of Iran’s drone and missile program, said the “negotiation with the enemy is pure loss.”
However, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani signaled on Tuesday diplomacy would likely continue, even as she criticized “contradictions from the U.S.” The combination of Iran’s military forces on the ground and Ghalibaf’s negotiating role “will benefit the Iranian people,” she told a news conference in response to a question on the attacks.
Mediators, including Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt, are working to help both sides bridge gaps in their positions. A crucial point at issue during Ghalibaf’s visit to Qatar was the release of $24 billion, a quarter of the Iranian funds frozen abroad, said officials from Iran and mediating countries. Iran is nearing a compromise to get half of that money released at an early stage, they said.
The war and U.S. blockade have added to the pressure to what was already a spiraling economic crisis in Iran. Strikes on its energy infrastructure had already led to rationing of motor fuel. Deteriorating living standards and rampant inflation led to nationwide protests that shook the Islamic Republic in January.
More pragmatic members of the regime have been pushing to get this relief through a deal before the economic problems descend into new rounds of demonstrations. They fear a surge in nationalism that has shielded the government from criticism could give way to discontent if the economy deteriorates further.
On the U.S. side, there were signs that Trump might be taking some of the criticism from GOP senators to heart and searching for ways to improve the terms of any deal over the weekend.
Some hawkish Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), had slammed the contours of the deal that emerged as a potential mistake that would empower Tehran and too closely resemble the nuclear agreement reached by former President Barack Obama , which Trump terminated during his first term.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump tried to reassure critics that the deal was “the exact opposite.” Later, he said he wanted Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to sign on to the Abraham Accords , establishing or expanding diplomatic relations with Israel. He suggested Iran could join as well once Tehran signed a peace deal.
Trump had spoken to aides and outside advisers about the concept of expanding the scope of the 2020 accords in the hours before the regional call and told aides he planned to raise the point with his counterparts, U.S. officials said. But Middle Eastern leaders hadn’t been briefed in that way before the call, leaving them surprised when Trump raised it, the officials said.
According to a senior White House official, the president, rather than an adviser, came up with the idea.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Abraham Accords had benefited all countries involved, so expanding them in this way “would be a natural complement to a peace deal between the United States and Iran.”
By raising the accords in the same breath as the deal to end the war, Trump changed not only the trajectory of the continuing peace talks, but also the U.S. relationship with Middle Eastern countries, where after years of regional war, skepticism of normalizing ties with Israel runs high.
Trump has long considered the accords among his top first-term foreign-policy accomplishments, officials said, and has tried to expand them during his second term, with Saudi Arabia the main target for inclusion. Trump’s new initiative has received praise from his political allies but private pushback from Qatar and Riyadh.
Progress has been made on the future status of highly enriched uranium stockpiles, which the U.S. fears could be used to build a nuclear weapon, the mediators said.
Trump late Monday backed down from a previous demand the stockpiles be handed over directly to the U.S. The enriched uranium could also be “destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location” under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Trump said on Truth Social.
That would bring the U.S. position closer to that of Iran, which has agreed to dilute its stockpiles to low enrichment level and has expressed openness to transfer them to Russia.
But mediators are worried about who is really calling the shots in Iran as new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei hasn’t been seen or heard in public since being appointed to succeed his father, who was killed on the war’s first day.
The mediators are trying to ascertain whether the current Iranian proposal has the approval of Khamenei and other hard-liners rather than just reflecting the views of Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other regime moderates.
An Iranian official said any decision wasn’t dependent on one single person and was made by consensus in the Supreme National Security Council, which includes relative moderate Pezeshkian as well as hard-line military and security leaders.
In a sign of Iran’s growing confidence in its ability to move on from the conflict, the Iranian president said he was ending an 88-day internet blockade. Digital monitoring group NetBlocks, which said this was the longest nationwide internet shutdown in modern history, confirmed connections had been partly restored.
