US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner arrived in Doha to meet Qatari mediators, the Gulf state’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday, as Washington’s negotiating team returned to the region for the latest round of talks to end the Iran war.
“Mr Steve Witfoff and Mr Jared Kushner are here in Doha to meet with mediators, with Qatari officials,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said.
The talks will be around all regional issues… including, of course, negotiations with Iran, but also including Lebanon,” he added. “They are not here for their negotiations with the Iranians.”
Iran on Monday separately announced it will send delegations to Qatar this week, although Tehran insisted it has not agreed to meet with the US “at any level” after attacks across the Persian Gulf over the weekend challenged the ongoing talks.
According to Tehran, the Iranian technical negotiators will focus strictly on consultations with Qatari officials on points of the framework deal, with the release of Iran’s frozen assets and the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil exports at the forefront of the talks.
Trump said the Islamic Republic had requested a meeting with US counterparts and that they planned to convene in Doha on Tuesday, later clarifying that “the meeting is going to be perhaps important, perhaps not. We will find out.”
Hostilities mounted in recent days in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil had been shipped before war began. After four days of trading strikes, both sides appeared to pause their attacks on Monday.
Witkoff, a real estate investor, has served as the administration’s lead envoy on Middle East negotiations since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, playing a central role in both the Gaza ceasefire talks and the more recent US-Iran framework deal signed on 17 June.
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has worked alongside him as a senior adviser on regional diplomacy, building on his role brokering the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term.
Any US-Iran talks in Qatar would be expected to be conducted at a technical level. It is unclear whether the two sides could still be compelled to meet for talks on Tuesday or in the coming days, and whether the negotiations will be face-to-face or conducted indirectly through Qatari and Pakistani mediators in Doha.
The urgency of the talks is further dictated by the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran digging in on its position that it will control the waterway from now on based on its own interpretation of the framework deal.
Additional sources • AFP, AP