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The next round of discussions will take place after the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is due to be laid to rest on July 9.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei and US President Donald Trump (right). (File)
Iran-US Doha Talks: The United States and Iran concluded latest round of indirect talks on Wednesday without a major breakthrough, with negotiators focusing on implementing an interim agreement while leaving Tehran’s nuclear programme off the agenda.
According to news agency Reutersciting people familiar with the matter, the two-day negotiations in Doha centred on restoring maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the phased release of frozen Iranian funds, two critical issues under the initial agreement.
Officials from both sides did not indicate that any significant differences had been resolved.
The talks, held through Qatari and Pakistani mediators, were described by Qatar as having made “positive progress” on issues related to the memorandum of understanding that halted hostilities in June. The next round of discussions will take place after the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is due to be laid to rest on July 9, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said.
Despite US President Donald Trump saying the the two sides were making progress on possible limits to Iran’s nuclear program – the main reason he launched the war along with Israel in February. “The denuclearization of Iran is moving along well,” he told reporters. “They’ve had very good meetings, and we’ll see.”
However, sources said that the issue was not discussed during the Doha meetings, which were largely technical in nature.
US Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that nuclear negotiations would be taken up in future rounds. “We’re worried about the nuclear issue, we’re going to start talking about that,” he told reporters.
Iran’s delegation was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi. However, senior US officials, including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, did not attend the sessions despite earlier expectations of high-level participation.
The talks came days after renewed military exchanges between the two countries over tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route through which nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas trade passes.
Iran has maintained that it seeks international recognition of its authority over the strategic waterway and has indicated it plans to begin levying shipping tolls from mid-August after a temporary toll-free period expires.
Following Trump’s remarks that the prospects of a return to full-scale conflict had diminished, global oil prices fell to their lowest level in four months as markets anticipated reduced geopolitical risks.
While both Washington and Tehran agreed to continue discussions, the absence of substantive negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme underscored the limited scope of the latest round of talks, leaving one of the central issues in the relationship unresolved.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Shobhit Gupta is a sub-editor at News18.com and covers India and International news. He is interested in day to day political affairs in India and geopolitics. He earned his BA Journalism (Hons) degre…Read More
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