Trump says Iran war will 'get wrapped up soon' as Qatari mediators report progress in Tehran
Donald Trump said on Friday the war with Iran would get wrapped up soon, without saying how, as Qatari mediators returned to Tehran with revised proposals and Iran was expected to respond by the weekend.
United States President Donald Trump said on Friday that the war with Iran is going to get wrapped up soon, while offering no timetable and no explanation of how an end to the conflict would be reached.
Speaking in an interview with Kansas City radio station KCMO, Trump repeated Washington's central demand, saying the United States needed a guarantee that Tehran would never obtain a nuclear weapon. Reports of the interview, carried by Reuters and other outlets, also noted that Trump has said the United States would not strike Iran before the November 3 midterm congressional elections, and that he expected the war to end one way or another.
The president's remarks came on the same day that a Qatari delegation was back in Tehran, the second Qatari visit within a week. Iran's state news agency IRNA said the delegation, headed by a senior adviser to Qatar's prime minister, was meeting senior Iranian officials to discuss bilateral relations and regional developments.
Al Jazeera's reporting from Tehran noted that the previous Qatari delegation, on Sunday, was believed to have carried a letter from US Vice President JD Vance proposing a new diplomatic process. The delegation now in Tehran may receive Iran's response to that letter and may be able to set out a potential new diplomatic path in more detail.
A source familiar with the diplomacy told CBS News that Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Friday to convey the latest edits to a draft proposal to end the war, and that there were indications of progress. According to that account, Iran is expected to respond by the weekend, and a meeting could follow within a week, possibly in Doha or Istanbul. Those details rest on a single unnamed source and have not been confirmed by the governments involved.
The mediation effort has been coordinated with Washington, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters. Qatar and Pakistan have acted as intermediaries in efforts to revive talks after earlier ceasefire arrangements, and regional governments including Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia have been pressing for a diplomatic breakthrough.
The gap between the two sides remains wide. Tehran insists on seven conditions before the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, including a region-wide ceasefire, the unfreezing of Iranian assets held abroad, the lifting of sanctions on its oil revenues and an end to the US naval blockade. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Thursday that those conditions must be met first.
Washington, by contrast, wants Iran's nuclear programme addressed from the very start of any formal negotiations, including the return of United Nations inspectors to nuclear facilities damaged in earlier strikes. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Wednesday that Tehran remained in close contact with intermediaries over its own seven-day plan, which it says could reopen the strait within a week if its conditions are met.
Other diplomatic signals pointed in the same direction on Friday. US envoy Tom Barrack was reported as saying Washington and Tehran were very close to agreeing a timeout, while reports of a meeting between Trump and Vance on Wednesday said the two had discussed a possible goodwill gesture towards Iran, such as humanitarian goods including food and medicine. Neither account amounts to an agreement, and Tehran has said it received the Vance letter but had not yet replied.
The diplomatic push is unfolding against a tense backdrop in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's Revolutionary Guards have claimed that tankers struck naval mines, claims that have not been independently verified, and where Oman's navy rescued 25 crew members from a vessel that caught fire after being targeted. US Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper was also reported as saying Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces were no longer present in the strait, a claim that sits alongside conflicting accounts from the region.
What happens next now turns, in the first instance, on whether Tehran replies to the latest proposals by the weekend, as the CBS source suggested it might. A reply could open the way to a meeting in Doha or Istanbul within a week, or it could expose the same disagreements over nuclear inspections, sanctions and the blockade that have stalled earlier rounds. If no common ground emerges, regional governments fear a major escalation after next week's US midterm elections, which is why the current round of mediation is being watched so closely.
