Iran and the U.S. announced yesterday, Monday, talks between their delegations in Qatar<\/b>, which are expected to begin later today, following the exchange of blows over the past few days.<\/p>\n
However, Tehran referred to technical-level contacts, not direct negotiationswith the opposing side, while Washington spoke of \u201chigh-level meetings\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to a U.S. official who spoke to Agence France-Presse, the two sides decided to halt the exchange of strikes that had been taking place despite the signing of an agreement in principle between them\u2014the \u201cmemorandum of understanding\u201d\u2014 <\/b>in mid-June, with the aim of ending the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
And U.S. President Donald Trump<\/b> announced via Truth Social\u2014in all capital letters\u2014that \u201cIran has requested a meeting\u201d and \u201cit will take place tomorrow (i.e., today, Tuesday) in Doha!\u201d<\/p>\n
Shortly afterward, White House spokesperson Caroline Levitt <\/b>told Fox News that the president\u2019s envoys, Steve Whitcomb and Jared Kushner <\/b>, are traveling to the emirate to \u201cparticipate in high-level meetings\u201d later this week.<\/p>\n
A diplomatic source familiar with the matter confirmed to AFP that a meeting of \u201ctechnical teams will take place in the coming days,\u201d adding that there are now \u201coperational communication channels to de-escalate incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
After initially denying that any meeting would take place, Iranian diplomats later confirmed on Monday that they are sending a \u201cdelegation of experts\u201d to Doha this week<\/b>. However, \u201cin the coming days, we will not negotiate with the American side at any level,\u201d insisted the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Esmail Baghaei.<\/b><\/p>\n
Tensions are centered on control of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz, where traffic returned to a crawl over the weekend, following two attacks on ships.<\/p>\n
In total, 29 ships carrying raw materials crossed the strait on Saturday and another 12 on Sunday<\/b>, according to data from the ship-tracking company Kpler; numbers much lower than those of previous days.<\/p>\n
Tehran has been reiterating for weeks, despite Washington\u2019s opposition, that the strait will not return to its pre-war state, when passage through it was free. And it is threatening ships that attempt to bypass the designated route.<\/p>\n
Iran and Oman say they will exercise their sovereign rights regarding passage through the strait and are preparing to impose fees<\/b> for the service provided.<\/p>\n
However, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea<\/b> (UNCLOS), adopted in 1982, but which Tehran has not ratified, guarantees the right of \u201ctransit\u201d through straits that serve international shipping, such as the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the rest of the world.<\/p>\n
The strait, which the Islamic Republic de facto closed when the war broke out on February 28, following the U.S. and Israeli attack against it, a move that destabilized the global hydrocarbon trade <\/b>and sent oil prices soaring, reopened just last week.<\/p>\n
However, Tehran allows only one route to be used, along its coastline.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Oman remains noncommittal and has announced the opening of an alternative temporary route, which the sultanate presented as an initiative coordinated with the UN to evacuate crews and ships that had been stranded in the Gulf for months.<\/p>\n
Haitham bin Tariq, the Sultan of Oman, and French President Emmanuel Macron <\/b>spoke out yesterday in favor of \u201cfree navigation, without conditions or restrictions,\u201d and agreed to conduct \u201cjoint mine-clearing operations.\u201d Iranian diplomats reacted by calling on Paris not to \u201cfurther complicate\u201d the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran and the U.S. announced yesterday, Monday, that talks between their delegations in Qatar are expected to begin later today, following the exchanges …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}