WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will meet Qatar’s prime minister in Washington on Monday, as the push to end the war with Iran picks up again after last week’s midterm elections, Reuters reported.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani is both prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar. He will sit down with Trump and Vice President JD Vance later on Monday, after a visit to Tehran last week.
Qatar has mediated since early in the war. It carries messages between Washington and Tehran and has put forward ideas meant to close the gap between the two sides. Vance led the negotiations that produced a short-lived truce in June, and he will meet Al-Thani separately on Monday.
What Tehran is offering
Iran’s plan would end the U.S. blockade of its ports, lift some sanctions and stop the bombing. In return, Tehran would end its own blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Talks on the nuclear program and the remaining sanctions would come after that.
Washington has rejected the plan repeatedly. Iran says it could be squeezed into two days. On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Tehran’s conditions “outrageous and ridiculous and really not realistic.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, answered him on Monday. Baghaei defended the plan as the most reasonable offer on the table and asked: “Is it unreasonable that Iran demands that US illegal sanctions and its naval blockade must be lifted before negotiations start and that the war should end on all fronts?”
Baghaei had a message on Iraq, too. U.S. pressure on Baghdad to close most of its border crossings with Iran should not damage ties between Tehran and Baghdad, he said. He also dismissed a new U.S. military task force aimed at Iran’s land trade as a diversion after the Republicans’ midterm losses.
Fighting has not stopped
The diplomacy is moving while attacks continue. Iranian state media said the United States struck Qeshm island overnight. A provincial official told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency on Monday that the strikes did not hit vital infrastructure or services. The United States has not commented on the Iranian media reports.
Attacks on tankers in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz rose sharply in October. They have kept going at the highest rate since the war began, figures from international maritime agencies showed last week. On Sunday, Iran said a tanker had hit a mine east of the strait. Iran typically does not acknowledge striking vessels that report being hit by projectiles.
Yemen’s Houthi group, an ally of Iran, said on Sunday that it had struck an office building of Saudi state oil company Aramco in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry said an attack had blown out windows across several floors of a building in the city’s financial district. The ministry did not assign responsibility.
Senior Republicans, Vance among them, have blamed the Iran war for their party’s poor showing in last week’s elections. Rubio said he did not believe a diplomatic breakthrough was imminent, even as the domestic pressure on Trump to end the conflict grows.
Anwar Gargash, a senior United Arab Emirates official, sounded the same note on Monday, saying a comprehensive political settlement between the United States and Iran appeared difficult. “We should… prepare for a long period of uncertainty in which neither a decisive resolution nor stable regional order can be taken for granted,” he said.
Trump has played down the likelihood of major warfare restarting soon, more than eight months after he launched the conflict alongside Israel on Feb. 28. He remains unwilling, though, to accept the Iranian truce plan already on the table.
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