US and Iran Keep Trading Blows as Talks Grind On in Secret
The war and the negotiation are now running in parallel. Even as American forces strike Iran and Tehran fires back at Gulf bases, US officials say technical talks on Iran’s nuclear programme are quietly continuing, with Washington striking and then pausing to avoid tipping the confrontation over the edge. President Trump, who declared last month’s memorandum “over”, has let negotiations go on while casting doubt on their outcome. Pakistani, Qatari and Gulf mediators are pressing both sides to hold the line.
The pattern that has emerged this week is deliberate: a burst of strikes, a pause, a back-channel message, then another burst. Both capitals appear to be using force to shape a negotiation neither has walked away from, which is why the sixty-day window opened in June, due to run until 21 August, remains technically alive despite Trump’s “over”. The knot is the Strait of Hormuz: who administers passage, and on whose terms — the question that turned a ceasefire into open fighting. Iran’s foreign minister has worked the phones with Saudi, Turkish and Omani counterparts and Pakistan’s army chief; US envoys have been in Doha. For Britain the exposure is concrete, at the naval base in Bahrain and the air hub in Qatar, and through the oil price that feeds every household bill. Watch whether the strike-and-pause rhythm holds, whether the technical talks yield anything on the nuclear file, and whether a single miscalculation turns a managed confrontation into the wider war both sides say they want to avoid.