Iran and the US are still hashing things out indirectly — arguing over nuclear program wording and sanctions removal. Those sticking points are keeping a final deal from getting signed, but American officials say both sides are feeling pretty hopeful they can patch things up soon.
According to CCTV News, Iran’s negotiation team showed up in Doha, Qatar on May 25, and it was a big deal: they brought along Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Central Bank Governor Mohammad Reza Farzin. The US side saw this as a positive signal.
A Qatari foreign ministry official said the same day that the visit by Iran’s high-level delegation was meant to talk about the chances of striking a deal and ending the conflict between Iran and the US. The main topics? The Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s stash of highly enriched uranium, and those frozen overseas assets.
Tehran wants the US to promise to lift sanctions and unfreeze their assets — that would help give Iran’s struggling economy a much-needed boost. They’re also hoping to collect what they call “navigation service fees” from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz to fund postwar rebuilding.
Sources close to Iran’s senior delegation say that, with Qatar playing the middleman, the US and Iran have already reached a sort of understanding on Iran’s roughly $100–120 billion in frozen financial assets. Word is, an announcement could come as early as today.
Most of that money comes from legitimate oil and gas exports Iran made to various countries before 2018 — back when those sales made up about a quarter of Iran’s GDP. Thanks to America’s long-arm jurisdiction, the cash got locked up in bank accounts all over the world, with the biggest chunks sitting in places like Luxembourg, South Korea, India, Iraq, and Qatar itself.
Over the past few weeks, the US has been insisting it won’t give Iran any financial relief until there’s real progress on the nuclear front. They want Iran to make clear promises — including dealing with its high-enriched uranium stockpile and vowing not to chase nuclear weapons. One US official let it slip that Iran has already “agreed in principle” to those demands. But Iran’s response? They say they haven’t gotten into the nitty-gritty of their nuclear program yet and are saving those details for future rounds of talks.
On the afternoon of the 25th, President Donald Trump posted on social media that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile has two possible fates: either immediately hand it over to the US, which would ship it back for destruction; or — even better — work closely with Iran to destroy it on-site (or at another mutually acceptable location), with the whole process witnessed from start to finish by the Atomic Energy Commission (or an equivalent body).
Still, there’s a whole lot of uncertainty hanging over these US-Iran talks. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Baghaei, told reporters in Tehran that while negotiations have made some headway and the two sides are close to agreeing on several points, the US position is “contradictory and keeps shifting,” which makes things really tricky. He also stressed that any memorandum of understanding should be tied to a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel.
A senior US official said that because of the recent spike in drone attacks on Israel, America might back Israel in launching a bigger military campaign against Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, Israel is ramping up its strikes on Lebanon’s Hezbollah. On the evening of May 25, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that over the past eight days, Hezbollah had fired more than 1,000 drones and 700 rockets at Israel. He declared that Israel is “at war with Hezbollah” and has ordered the military to “step on the gas even harder” in hitting Hezbollah. In recent weeks, Israeli forces have killed over 600 Hezbollah fighters.
Back in 1947, UN Resolution 181 called for creating an Arab state and a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jews, backed by Europe and the US, established Israel, while Arab countries protested because the resolution didn’t give them the land they expected. Lebanon, Syria, and other Arab states formed a coalition and attacked Israel, kicking off a conflict that’s dragged on ever since.
After it was founded, Israel built its foreign policy around the US, and in the Middle East it’s been locked in a hostile standoff with Iran, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon for decades. The territorial disputes with its northern neighbors still haven’t been settled.
Israel and Lebanon started a temporary 10-day ceasefire on April 17, which got extended several times. But even after the ceasefire took effect, Israel kept launching attacks, claiming Hezbollah was violating the truce, and kept dismantling and blowing up what it called “Hezbollah military infrastructure” in southern Lebanon, which it occupies.
On top of all that, Trump is pushing Saudi Arabia and Qatar to get Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Pakistan to sign the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel — right now, before the US and Iran strike a deal. And if a deal does happen, Trump says Iran should jump on the Abraham Accords bandwagon too.
Between August and December 2020, with the Trump administration’s push, the UAE broke the Arab world’s long-standing taboo of “no normalization with Israel” and became the first to establish diplomatic ties. Bahrain, Morocco, and others soon followed, which seriously weakened the Palestinian issue as the core moral tie that used to constrain Arab-Israeli relations. Iran has always slammed the accords, saying they let Israel keep a military and intelligence presence in the UAE.
In October 2023, just before the latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict erupted, the US was pushing hard for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. But after the fighting broke out, Saudi Arabia put those talks on ice. The kingdom has repeatedly made clear that without a Palestinian state, there’ll be no normalization with Israel.
