By Andrew Mills, Parisa Hafezi and Bo Erickson<\/p>\n
DOHA\/DUBAI\/WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) – Iran and the United States concluded a round of indirect talks on Wednesday with no sign they had made headway toward a lasting peace, focusing \u200cinstead on issues that they had supposedly resolved two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Sources said negotiators for the two countries spent two \u200cdays in Doha discussing maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and financial incentives for Iran, two pillars of the initial agreement they signed in June, \u200brather than more difficult topics that framework was supposed to tee up.<\/p>\n
In Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump said the two sides were making progress on possible limits to Iran’s nuclear program — the main reason he launched the war in February. “The denuclearization of Iran is moving along well,” he told reporters. “They’ve had very good meetings, and we’ll see.”<\/p>\n
But sources said the nuclear program did not come up in the \u200ctalks, which were technical in nature.<\/p>\n
U.S. Vice President \u2060JD Vance said that would be addressed later. \u201cObviously, we’re worried about the nuclear issue, we’re going to start talking about that,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
The two sides did not meet face to face, instead interacting \u2060separately with mediators from Qatar and Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and top U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, dispatched to the region for what the White House had billed as “high-level” talks, did not attend the sessions, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
The leader of Iran’s \u200bdelegation, \u200bdeputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi, said talks concluded. Neither side said whether \u200bthey had managed to bridge their differences.<\/p>\n
WHO CONTROLS \u200cTHE STRAIT?<\/p>\n
The initial deal calls for Iran and the United States to allow shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquid natural gas before the war. Though traffic has partially resumed, the status of the strategic waterway remains unclear and the two countries exchanged strikes last weekend following an Iranian attack on a cargo ship.<\/p>\n
Iran is determined to win international recognition of its control over the strait even if it has to do so by force, two senior Iranian \u200csources said, and has repeatedly said it will assess tolls on shipping \u200bstarting in mid-August, after a toll-free period specified by the initial agreement expires.<\/p>\n
Trump \u200bdownplayed the possibility of a return to all-out war with \u200bIran. “I think they’ve come a long way,” he said.<\/p>\n
Oil prices fell to their lowest level in \u200cfour months following Trump’s comments, and analysts cut their \u200bprice forecasts for the first time \u200bsince the war began.<\/p>\n
Iran’s state media said on Wednesday a foreign container ship had run aground in shallow waters outside the shipping route designated by Iranian authorities.<\/p>\n
“Hormuz continues to reopen but it’s patchy, unpredictable, and not fully transparent,” said \u200bVandana Hari, founder of oil market analysis provider \u200cVanda Insights.<\/p>\n
Several European countries have offered to help clear mines from the Strait, but Germany’s defense minister Boris \u200bPistorius said he did not expect his country to participate, citing Iran’s unwillingness to cooperate with other countries.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Reuters bureaux; Writing by Andy Sullivan, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrew Mills, Parisa Hafezi and Bo Erickson DOHA\/DUBAI\/WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) – Iran and the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[102,29539,35314,34,29639,4048,864,101],"class_list":["post-186648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-strait-of-hormuz","tag-hormuz","tag-indirect-talks","tag-initial-agreement","tag-iran","tag-leader-of-iran","tag-maritime-traffic","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116846773192661551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}