Qatar is working to help secure a short-term agreement between the US and Iran to restart negotiations and pave the way for broader regional talks, but the path to a deal remains fraught, a senior Qatari official said on Monday.
"Any agreement right now is not going to be a final agreement, it's going to be an agreement to start negotiations," Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said at the Concordia Summit in New York on Monday. Qatar, alongside with Pakistan, has played a leading role in attempting to broker a diplomatic resolution of the conflict between Iran and the US.
"On both sides, there is an expectation that the other side will blink first," Al-Ansari said.
The reopening of the strait of Hormuz and a viable ceasefire in the region are the requisite preconditions for the US-Iran dialogue, al-Ansari said. A lasting peace deal between the US and Iran needs to restore the pre-war status quo in the strait of Hormuz, he said.
But Tehran has made it clear it seeks to retain a degree of control over Hormuz flows, possibly in collaboration with Oman and other neighboring states. Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian and US president Donald Trump both are attending the UN General Assembly in New York this week, but so far, there is no meeting scheduled between the two leaders.
Traffic through Hormuz remains at a fraction of pre-war levels. The US military has enabled the passage of oil tankers through the strait, despite non-stop Iranian attacks on vessels passing through that lane, which skirts the Omani coast.
The US effort enabled exports of 1bn bl of crude and products in the past two months, the top US military commander in the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, asserted on 19 September. The figure, amounting to roughly 16mn b/d, is far higher than what independent analysts estimate or what other US government officials previously have claimed.
The US is set to convene a meeting with Mideast Gulf officials on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. "There might be differences between the way we perceive Iran, but I think all of us in the region perceive the US in the same way, which is a strategic partner that we are working with," al-Ansari said. "Tomorrow's meeting will be toward that end."
Diplomats from the Mideast Gulf countries, joined by Iraq, were set to meet with an Iranian delegation in Oman on 14 September to discuss regional issues, including shipping through the strait of Hormuz. But the meeting was cancelled at the last minute, a decision al-Ansari attributed to a drone attack that forced Saudi Aramco to shut down its 7mn b/d East-West pipeline.
The Mideast Gulf countries are working to keep conflict resolution efforts on separate tracks for the Saudi-Houthi confrontation in Yemen and the broader war between the US and Iran, al-Ansari said.
"If there's going to be a suspension of the Houthi attacks, if there's going to be a de-escalation on that front, it'll probably start with a de-escalation with the Iranians," Michael Ratney, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said last week.
The planned meeting between Iran and its Mideast Gulf states likely got delayed because Iran's neighbors need to work out a common position "on a very, very contentious set of issues," Ratney said during a discussion hosted by Washington think tank the Arab Gulf States Institute.
"But I think many of the Gulf states may well have given up on US diplomacy, resolving this war or ending it satisfactorily, and are turning to direct contacts with the Iranians themselves," Ratney said.
