Iran sends nuclear proposal to US through Qatar, but talks hinge on seven Tehran demands
Iran has sent the United States a proposal on its nuclear programme through Qatari mediators, a senior Iranian official told Reuters, but negotiations will only begin once Washington meets seven Iranian conditions, including lifting sanctions and releasing frozen assets.
Iran has sent the United States a proposal on its nuclear programme through Qatar, but negotiations on the issue will only begin after Washington meets seven Iranian demands, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Thursday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington was reviewing the proposal but declined to provide further details.
Tehran’s conditions, as described by its officials, include the lifting of US sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets and war reparations. Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said during a visit to Russia on Thursday that Tehran had presented Washington with seven conditions for negotiations. “On the issue of diplomacy, we have announced seven conditions to the Americans. As long as they do not execute our seven conditions, we will neither open the Strait of Hormuz nor have negotiations,” he said, after talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Washington, meanwhile, has insisted that nuclear issues must be included in any initial negotiations, a position that sits uneasily with Tehran’s demand that its conditions be met first. That gap — over what comes first, relief or talks about the nuclear programme — is now the central obstacle facing the mediators, and neither side has said publicly how it might be bridged.
Qatari mediators have been shuttling between Tehran and Washington in recent days in an effort to bridge the differences. On Monday, they travelled to Tehran to discuss a draft agreement that had been under discussion for more than a week. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, said both sides were reviewing proposals submitted by mediators and that discussions were continuing, a sign that the channel remains active even as the two sides hold firm in public.
The proposal arrives in the middle of a fragile military standoff. The war between Iran and the United States, launched alongside Israel in late February, has now run for more than seven months, and the fear in the region is that fighting could resume after the US midterm elections. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he would not rule out renewed military operations after the vote, while Iran has warned it would expand its retaliation if the war resumes.
Trump has sent mixed signals about the prospect of renewed fighting. On Tuesday, he told Fox News: “I’m not looking to ... kill lots of people. If we have to, we’ll have to.” A day earlier, he told reporters that the United States had won the war and suggested he was satisfied with the current standoff. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday, he said: “We seem to be getting everything we want,” adding that Washington had no immediate plans to strike Iran. In his latest remarks, carried on Al Jazeera’s live coverage, he warned that the US may have to “destroy” the rest of Iran.
The standoff has already flared again this week. The United States reportedly carried out limited strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island, targeting surface-to-air missiles that had been used against US assets. American officials described the operation as defensive and said it did not signal a return to major combat operations, but the strikes underlined how close the two sides remain to open fighting even while diplomats talk.
The fate of the Strait of Hormuz is tied directly to the negotiation. Rezaei made clear that Tehran will not reopen the waterway until its conditions are met, and the strait — through which about a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passed before the war — has become both a bargaining chip and a flashpoint. Five oil tankers and a tugboat caught fire in the strait on 5 November after striking naval mines, according to Iran, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned that any state helping the US in renewed attacks against Iran will be treated as a “legitimate target”.
Israel’s concerns add another layer to the diplomacy. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Israel had shared intelligence with Washington indicating that Tehran was considering using chemical weapons against its adversaries. American officials remain divided over the credibility of the assessment and whether Iran would actually use such weapons, but the report has fed Israeli anxiety about Iran’s military capabilities while talks continue.
What happens next depends first on Washington’s review of the proposal now in its hands. If the US finds enough in it to answer, the Qatari channel could produce a first round of talks, possibly built around the draft agreement mediators have been working on for more than a week. If Washington rejects the conditions outright, or if Tehran holds its line on the strait, the standoff is likely to harden, and the risk of renewed strikes — which both sides have threatened and neither has ruled out — will rise again. For now, the proposal keeps diplomacy alive, but only just.
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