The foreign ministry of Qatar said on Tuesday that diplomatic efforts between the United States and Iran are “ongoing,” but no direct talks between the two are currently scheduled.
“We can confirm that efforts are ongoing with all parties. We are looking towards diplomatic resolution as we are speaking right now,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said.
“Everybody in the region is working in tandem in order to avoid escalation. The mediators, Qatar, Pakistan, and now Oman, are all working together on that issue,” he said.
Ansari said Qatar’s priorities included “avoiding escalation,” reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and “reopening the door for diplomacy between the parties.”
“What we do not want to see right now is a major escalation in our region,” he said.
Two men wade in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz with vessels anchored in the background, off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Sunday, July 12, 2026. (Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
Ansari said Qatar’s mediation efforts have reached “very progressive stages,” but that progress does not yet include American and Iranian representatives speaking with each other.
“Right now we don’t have anything on the books when it comes to direct talks, but we are hopeful that if we can get a resumption of the talks anytime soon, we’d be able to push forward towards a major deal,” he said, without offering a timeline for such an agreement.
Ansari’s comments would appear to contradict President Donald Trump’s assertion that talks with Iran are underway, and that Iran was so eager to make a deal that he decided to call off the devastating military operation he had planned for this week.
“The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday night.
According to Trump, the nascent deal “would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”
“There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran,” the president said on Sunday.
Trump said Iran had “very strongly” appealed to the United States for renewed peace talks.
“Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see,” he said.
Having said that, Trump noted that Iran had a history of privately calling for talks while publicly refusing to negotiate.
“They said, ‘We’d like to make a deal.’ Now, you know, I don’t know what they said, because a lot of times they’ll say that to me, and then they’ll go out and say, ‘We don’t know what he’s talking about.’ Obviously, they don’t want to be attacked,” he mused.
On Monday, Trump said negotiations with Iran were underway and warned: “This is a last chance for them to sign a good document.”
“The talks are going on right now. We are talking right now at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE, and backed by Qatar,” he said.
“We’re talking about the opening of the Strait, having it open literally by tomorrow, completely open. That’s phase one, and phase two is we then will talk about the nuclear,” he said.
Trump rejected Iran’s demands for fees and ransoms in the Strait of Hormuz.
“I’m not going to let them charge. If anybody’s going to charge, we’ll charge. We have total control,” he said.
Trump also took a moment on Monday to fume about the “unbelievably duplicitous” leadership of Iran in a Truth Social post.
“They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman,’” he wrote.
As Trump noted in his Truth Social post, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Monday that no talks were underway with the United States, and Iran’s only current negotiations were with Oman over a mutual scheme to charge fees for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Senior Iranian sources allegedly told the leftist outlet New York Times (NYT) on Monday that Iran and Oman have nearly reached a deal for control, and exploitation, of the strait.
Under the alleged terms of the deal reported by the left-wing website, ships entering the Persian Gulf would be forced to sail along the Iranian coast, while departing ships would use the Omani side of the strait. The two countries would allegedly divide “fees” extorted from international shipping for both passages, ostensibly to cover “environmental impact” and “security.”
U.S. officials allegedly told the NYT they doubted President Trump would accept such an arrangement, despite rumors that he might be willing to tolerate an Iran-Oman partnership extracting fees from the Strait of Hormuz if the strait is fully reopened, and Trump’s denuclearization concerns are addressed.
A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Tuesday that “Tehran is unlikely to change its position” on controlling the strait and charging fees, and giving Oman some control over outbound traffic was the only concession Iran would make.
Reuters’s source said Iran has rejected an Omani proposal for equal control over the entire strait between both countries, because it would not address Tehran’s “security concerns.” In truth, Iran probably rejected the proposal because Oman could have used its territorial waters to completely bypass Iranian piracy, a concern addressed by forcing all ships entering the Persian Gulf to use Iranian waters.
Read the full article here