Here's the latest
• US-Iran talks: US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are in Doha to meet Qatari mediators, but there will not be a meeting with Iranian officials, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. Trump had said Monday the US would meet the Iranians today in Doha.
• In Israel: Defense Minister Israel Katz said Trump insisted on linking the wars in Lebanon and Iran during ceasefire talks, despite his country’s desire to handle them as separate conflicts. He said Israel had received US backing to stay in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed across the country.
• Strait of Hormuz: The removal of mines will be carried out solely by Iran, its deputy foreign minister said, pushing back on remarks by President Emmanuel Macron suggesting that France, Oman and others would collaborate.
Witkoff and Kushner will not meet with Iranians in Doha, Qatar says
US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be in Doha to meet Qatari mediators, but there will not be a meeting with Iranian officials, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday.
The Qatari official added that the $6 billion in Iranian frozen funds have not been transferred to Tehran, adding this will happen “according to the advancement of negotiations.”
Regarding the Strait of Hormuz, he said that Doha is coordinating with Oman on safe passage of ships through the waterway.
Witkoff, Kushner to meet with Qatari PM on Tuesday
President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to meet today with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani and other mediators in Doha, a White House official told CNN.
Delegations from the US and Iran are expected to participate separately tomorrow in technical talks with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan, the official added.
The details of the negotiations come as Washington and Tehran have sent mixed signals about whether they will hold direct talks in the Gulf state.
Iran said Monday that no negotiation meetings were scheduled with the United States at any level in the coming days, while Trump wrote in a social media post that the US would meet with Iran in Doha.
A senior US official had said over the weekend that technical talks regarding the memorandum of understanding were “on track” despite a recent exchange of fire.
Little progress achieved in two weeks since Iran and US signed agreement
What is the deal? It is two weeks since the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding, that was supposed to offer a path towards permanently ending the war in the region.
Widely viewed as highly favourable to Tehran, it requires the US to unfreeze Iranian assets, terminate sanctions, allow Iranian oil exports, lift its blockade on Iranian ports and develop a reconstruction fund for Iran. In return, Tehran must guarantee safe passage for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz and reaffirm its pledge to not develop nuclear weapons.
What’s happened in the past two weeks? There have been frequent reminders of this truce’s fragility. US and Iranian forces traded strikes over the weekend after the Islamic Republic attacked two ships transiting through the strait.
That - again - impacted marine traffic in the narrow waterway, which had substantially increased last week, though it remains well below pre-war levels. Meanwhile, fighting between Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces has continued in southern Lebanon, despite agreements aimed at curbing the violence there.
What are the unresolved issues? The MOU basically kicked the can down the road, leaving most details to be sorted later. But two weeks into the 60 days allocated for negotiating the final deal, there is little sign of progress on several of the most important issues.
One clause in the MOU has created the potential for a catch-22 situation. It stipulates that further negotiations will only start once the issues of Iran’s frozen assets, US sanctions on Iranian oil, Strait of Hormuz traffic, the US blockade of Iranian ports, and fighting between the two countries (and in Lebanon), has been dealt with. So even agreeing on a sequence remains difficult.
While Tehran said yesterday half of its frozen assets held in Qatar will be returned, US officials have said no such assets have yet been released. And Iran continues to insist ships must have its permission to transit the strait via designated routes, but a growing number of vessels are using an alternative route hugging the Omani coastline. Substantive talks discussing Iran’s nuclear program haven’t begun yet.
Three shipping routes have emerged since the US-Iran agreement
The ceasefire agreement between Tehran and Washington stipulates that Iran will make “arrangements using its best efforts” to ensure the safe passage of commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies travel.
The strait had been effectively closed by Iran since the US and Israel launched their joint attacks on the country in late February. Ensuring unobstructed transit through the waterway was Iran’s main concession to the US in ceasefire negotiations.
Three distinct routes for ships have now emerged in the narrow maritime corridor, with different authorities vying to organize the transit of dozens of vessels through the 21-mile-wide waterway.
One southern route goes through the waters off Oman; a second route, which was used before the war, passes through the middle of the strait; and a third route further north is controlled by Iran. This leaves vessel operators with a difficult choice over which path to take.
Araghchi did not specify the “parallel arrangements” but a growing number of ships have sought to evade Iranian control of the passage by taking a southern route close to the Omani coast.
“All this is very confusing for safely navigating those waters,” Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of maritime risk consultancy Marisks told CNN, adding that “the current environment is extremely dangerous.”
Read more in our full article here.
What we know about the upcoming talks in Doha
Iran is downplaying the purpose of its visit to Doha this week, insisting that no negotiations with its American counterparts will take place in the Qatari capital.
Yet regardless of how the Islamic Republic chooses to frame its participation, diplomacy is expected to take place in Doha this week following a tense exchange of strikes over the weekend.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling to Doha, two US officials told CNN. An Iranian delegation will also be in the city this week, spokesperson for the Iranian negotiating team Esmail Baghaei said yesterday.
Confusion arose after Iran declared there would be no negotiations with the US in Doha, even as it confirmed it is sending an expert delegation this week to negotiate the release of its frozen assets under a previous agreement with Washington.
A diplomatic source told CNN yesterday that teams from both sides were expected in Doha this week.
“The fact that US representatives are traveling to Qatar has nothing to do with the Iranian delegation’s visit, which is being conducted to follow up on (the agreement),” Baghaei told reporters Monday.
Regardless of how Iran describes the visit, the simultaneous presence of expert delegations from Tehran and Washington in Doha following the weekend’s tensions is significant and cannot be overlooked.
Iranian negotiators’ attempts to distance themselves from any talks may also be a tactic to ease domestic pressure from hardline factions, which have repeatedly accused them of conceding too much and appearing overly accommodating to the US.
Framing the visit as focused on securing the release of funds – rather than negotiations – could be another way to relieve that pressure.
A closer look at Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy traveling to Doha today
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling to Doha, Qatar, today, two US officials have told CNN, after President Donald Trump said yesterday that his country and Iran would meet in the city today.
Witkoff helped negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza but has also attempted to achieve an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, without success, after sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin on multiple occasions.
Witkoff, who is a former business associate of Trump’s, sees the US president almost daily, texts with Trump’s family members, has walk-in privileges to the Oval Office, and enjoys a longer leash than nearly anyone else in the Trump administration, sources told CNN last year.
The investor was initially appointed to be special envoy for the Middle East, tasked with trying to bring an end to the war in Gaza. But his portfolio has outgrown that mandate.
A Middle Eastern official who has worked with Witkoff praised him as a “smart negotiator” and said his go-it-alone approach can result in “efficient and effective execution of deals.”
Months after deadly strike on Iran elementary school, major questions loom
The US military was likely responsible for the strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed at least 168 children, according to CNN and expert analysis of evidence. CNN’s Jake Tapper reports, four months after the attack.
40 ships transited Strait of Hormuz on Monday, data shows
Forty ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, according to data from maritime intelligence firm Kpler, a number still significantly lower than the average daily crossings before the war with Iran started in February.
Sixteen of the 40 vessels transited via the Iranian route through the strait, according to Kpler data shared with CNN. Another 12 had gone dark or transited via an “unknown” route, it added.
Before Israel and the US launched strikes on Iran in late February, more than 100 ships per day transited the strait daily on average.
"Extremely difficult" to wrest control of Hormuz from Iran, says analyst
CNN’s Bianna Golodryga speaks with Edward Fishman, author of “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare,” about the renewed tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Mixed signals on Iran talks as Witkoff heads to Doha. Here's the latest
President Donald Trump said Iran talks are being hosted today in Qatar, and his envoy Steve Witkoff is en route to the capital Doha, according to two US officials.
But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said no talks are scheduled with the US at any level in the coming days, though an expert Iranian delegation will travel to Doha later this week.
Baghaei said Iran and the US have not yet entered the stage of negotiating a final agreement.
The inconsistency in messaging raises further doubts that negotiators can meet their 60-day deadline after the two sides traded attacks over the weekend, straining their already fragile ceasefire.
Here’s what we’re covering:
- In Iran: Baghaei said that under Clause 13 of the US-Iran memorandum, talks on a final agreement can begin only after implementation has started on Clauses 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11. He said the US has issued licenses tied to Clause 10, which covers oil sales, and that Iran is following up on implementing them. He also said the implementation of Clause 11, related to frozen assets, is also being pursued. In that context, an expert delegation will travel to Doha later this week, he said, adding that any US visit to Qatar is unrelated to the Iranian delegation’s trip.
- Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran will honor its commitments if the US does the same, while warning that Tehran will respond firmly to threats. He also said that half of Iran’s $12 billion in frozen assets held in Qatar will be returned to Tehran — an issue on which the US has issued conflicting statements.
- In the US: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News there will be high-level talks with technical talks on the sidelines. “Special Envoy (Steve) Witkoff and (Trump’s son-in-law) Jared Kushner will be flying to Doha for high-level meetings this week,” she said.
- In Israel: Defense Minister Israel Katz said Trump insisted on linking the wars in Lebanon and Iran during ceasefire talks, despite his country’s desire to handle them as separate conflicts. He said Israel had received US backing to stay in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed across the country.
- In the Strait of Hormuz: The removal of mines will be carried out solely by Iran, its deputy foreign minister said, pushing back on remarks by President Emmanuel Macron suggesting that France, Oman and others would collaborate. Over two dozen commercial vessels transited the chokepoint over 24 hours, according to MarineTraffic data, a fraction of pre-war levels.
- In Lebanon: Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, considered a key ally of Hezbollah, slammed the US-brokered agreement between Israel and his country, saying it “won’t be implemented.” Conflict between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israeli forces in south Lebanon continued over the weekend, days after the countries signed a new truce.
CNN’s Ellis Kim, Mohammed Tawfeeq, Aileen Graef, Dalia Abdelwahab and Casey Gannon contributed to this reporting.
