Iran and US still far from a deal to end the war, senior Iranian official tells Reuters, as Tehran ties Hormuz reopening to its conditions
Iran and the United States remain far from an agreement to end their war despite intensified mediation by Qatar, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday, warning that Tehran’s conditions must be met before the Strait of Hormuz can reopen and that nuclear talks can only begin afterwards.
Iran and the United States are still far from a deal to end their war, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday, even as mediators intensified their efforts to prevent a return to major fighting after America’s midterm elections.
The assessment cuts against the more hopeful signals of the past two days, when both sides had spoken of progress and of draft proposals under discussion. According to the Reuters report, carried by several outlets on Tuesday, mediators are working hard to narrow the gaps between Tehran and Washington, but the distance between them remains wide.
The sequence behind the talks helps explain why. Qatari mediators travelled to Tehran on Monday night to discuss a version of a draft US-Iran deal that has been under negotiation for the past eight days. Qatar said on Tuesday that both the United States and Iran remained committed to mediation and were reviewing proposals put forward by the mediators, and its foreign ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, said there were intensive joint regional efforts under way to avoid escalation.
An official briefed on the talks added a timetable: feedback from Washington and Tehran was expected within the next 36 hours on a new mediator suggestion designed to move the process along. That detail matters because it shows the diplomacy is not stalled — a fresh proposal is on the table and both capitals are studying it — even though, in Tehran’s own account, it is not yet close to an agreement.
The Iranian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, set out Tehran’s red lines in blunt terms. Tehran’s conditions must be met if the United States wants the Strait of Hormuz reopened, the official said, referring to the narrow waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s crude oil and natural gas supplies passed before the conflict began in late February.
Nuclear talks, the official added, could only start after those conditions were fulfilled, and Tehran would not accept what it called Washington’s excessive demands. The ordering is significant: it reverses the sequence some outside observers had assumed, in which a ceasefire or a reopening of the strait might come first and nuclear negotiations follow. Tehran, on this account, wants its conditions satisfied before either step.
The warning did not stop at diplomacy. Tehran would respond forcefully, in the region and beyond, to US strikes, the official said, and Iran’s armed forces chief, Ali Abdollahi, said the military was updating its target lists to include US and Israeli material and non-material assets and would respond immediately to any threat, without geographical limits.
That rhetoric followed a night of military action. The United States carried out defensive strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island overnight, with a US official saying the strikes targeted surface-to-air missiles used against US assets, and President Donald Trump later publicly confirmed the raid, describing it as a minor attack on a newly built anti-aircraft facility. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in turn, said they had downed a US MQ-9 drone and two Lucas drones in the skies near the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said on Tuesday that the ball was now in Washington’s court, after Tehran had delivered what he described as a strong and rational response. Iran’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, said Tehran was entering negotiations with complete pessimism and would take part in any diplomatic process only with caution, while Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said the US response to Iran’s demands was unconvincing and that Washington must fully and explicitly meet all seven of Tehran’s conditions before the strait could reopen.
Alongside the Iran-US track, Tehran is also pursuing a regional one. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday that talks with Saudi Arabia were continuing, aimed at new regional security arrangements that would exclude foreign military involvement — a theme that also ran through China’s diplomacy in Beijing on Monday, when President Xi Jinping met Oman’s sultan and Beijing promised to send its Middle East envoy on shuttle visits to Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia later this month.
The stakes of the gap between the two sides are visible in the strait itself. On Tuesday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy said three oil tankers had struck naval mines and caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz after using unauthorised shipping lanes, a reminder that even while diplomats talk, the waterway remains dangerous and contested. Oil prices, which had plunged more than 7% on Monday on hopes of diplomacy, rose by about $1 on Tuesday as the Qeshm strikes revived fears of escalation.
What happens next therefore hinges on the 36-hour window for feedback on the mediators’ new suggestion, and on whether Washington is willing to move towards Tehran’s conditions — or whether, as the senior Iranian official’s account suggests, the two sides remain too far apart for a deal before the post-midterm period both sides have been watching. Until that feedback arrives, the war is neither resumed in full nor ended, and the strait that carries so much of the world’s energy remains the bargaining chip at the centre of it.
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