Mediators Scramble to Save the US-Iran Truce as Strikes Trade
After two nights in which American forces struck scores of Iranian targets and Iran fired back at US bases across the Gulf, a diplomatic scramble is under way to stop the war from swallowing the region’s fragile truce. Pakistan and Qatar, the original brokers, are working the phones alongside Saudi, Turkish and Omani counterparts to bring both sides back to the table. President Trump, who declared last month’s memorandum “over”, blew hot and cold: Iran, he said, “badly” wants a deal, but he may “no longer be interested in even trying”.
The sixty-day negotiating window opened by June’s memorandum does not formally expire until 21 August, and neither side has torn it up on paper — the thread the mediators are pulling. The sticking point is the one that started the fighting: who controls the Strait of Hormuz, and on whose terms shipping passes. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has spoken to his Saudi, Turkish and Omani counterparts and to Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, one of the war’s principal go-betweens; US officials have been sent to Doha. The choreography is familiar from June, but the mood is worse, because this time talks are being attempted under live fire rather than a ceasefire. Britain’s forces sit inside the map, at the naval base in Bahrain and the air hub in Qatar. Watch whether a pause can be agreed before the strikes resume for a third night, and whether Trump’s ambivalence is negotiating posture or a genuine loss of interest.