Iran and the United States held indirect technical talks on implementing their June 17 Memorandum of Understanding, Qatar said on Wednesday night.
Qatari and Pakistani mediators “concluded separate meetings with the U.S. and Iranian negotiators in Doha today, with positive progress made on issues related to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding,” Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Doha’s Foreign Ministry, stated.
The talks built on the outcomes of a first round of talks held in Switzerland on June 20, the spokesman said.
“The parties agreed to continue discussions over the coming period, with the next meeting to be scheduled at the earliest possible time following the funeral processions of the former Iranian supreme leader,” he added.
Mass funeral ceremonies for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are set to begin on Saturday, more than four months after he was eliminated in the opening Israeli Air Force strikes of “Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury.” The processions are expected to conclude with his burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad on July 9.
U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier on Wednesday that the technical talks were going “very good.” Tehran has “come a long way” in implementing the MoU and was “getting along very well” with the United States, he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
“We hit them very hard last week,” Trump said when asked about reports he had considered resuming all-out war with Iran. He added, “I think they’re fine.”
“It’s the denuclearization of Iran—it’s very simple. And Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” the president said.
Sources familiar with the talks told Reuters they focused on maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and unfreezing Iranian funds, adding that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was not discussed because the meetings were technical in nature.
Senior U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who were in Qatar for what the White House had described as “high-level” talks, did not attend the meetings, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the regime’s top negotiator, announced on Tuesday that Tehran would not take part in further talks until the conditions outlined in the MoU were met, including an end to the fighting on all war fronts. He said the current negotiations were aimed at ensuring the United States fulfilled its commitments.
