Key facts
- Indirect talks in Doha ran into a third day on Sunday, with Qatar mediating the release of more than $6bn in Iranian assets.
- Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran had agreed to cut the sanctions-relief and strait-reopening timetable from seven to two days.
- Unidentified missiles struck a Pakistan-bound Qatari LNG tanker near the strait of Hormuz on Friday, the report said.
- US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday the US was open to a diplomatic solution.
- Iran's security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, said he had received a letter from US vice-president JD Vance seeking to revive talks.
Gulf state officials were braced for the worst as they waited for Washington's response to an Iranian proposal that could reopen the strait of Hormuz before US midterm elections on Tuesday, according to a Financial Times report that did not date the event.
Indirect talks in Doha ran into a third day on Sunday, with Qatar trying to negotiate the release of more than $6 billion in Iranian assets, which could lead to the reopening of the strait and the restart of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.
The United Arab Emirates envoy Anwar Gargash said another round of escalation was not in the interests of Iran or any of its neighbors. "We are also, as we have shown before, braced for the worst," he said, adding that relations with Iran were essential because Iran is a neighbor.
Qatar's mediation continued despite unidentified missiles striking a Pakistan-bound Qatari LNG tanker near the strait of Hormuz on Friday. The attack came despite the ship receiving direct clearance and safe-passage approval from Tehran just hours earlier.
Qatar has focused on a plan to compress the process by which the US lifts sanctions, and then Iran reopens the strait and starts nuclear talks. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran had agreed to cut the timetable from seven to two days, and said he hoped the US would choose "diplomacy over other paths." He said there were currently no plans for direct talks with Washington and that he was due to go to Turkmenistan on Monday.
Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US had knocked out much of Iran's military but still had to "take care of" one or two targets, and that negotiations to end the war, which he said was started by the US and Israel in February, were "going fine but you know they're not very reliable." Earlier on Saturday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US was open to a diplomatic solution, while Iran's security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, disclosed he had received a letter from US vice-president JD Vance seeking to revive talks. Rezaei said he had yet to respond.
Ali Nikzad, the deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, said Tehran would not discuss its nuclear program "under any circumstances or under any pressure." Rezaei told Iranian TV that Trump was being hounded by a war he claimed had wider international repercussions than the Vietnam war.