President Trump announced today that peace negotiators from the United States and Iran would meet in Doha, Qatar, presumably to continue negotiations related to the memorandum of understanding the two countries signed on June 17.
But that isn’t true, Iran said. Instead, it will send negotiators to Doha to discuss releasing the seized Iranian assets, apropos of the MOU.
The back-and-forth followed a weekend in which Iran and the United States again traded blows in the Persian Gulf to no purpose.
As well today, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, denied that France will help remove mines from the Strait or Hormuz. Iran, he said, will demine the strait. The U.S.-Iran MOU says the same thing.
Iran Going for Money
After a weekend of tit-for-tat strikes, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox & Friends today to announce that Iran asked for a sit-down with U.S. officials.
“Iran has requested a meeting this week,” Leavitt told the Fox talkers. Middle East enjoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will fly to Doha for “high-level meeting” to discuss the 14-point MOU and technical issues.
“IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING,” Trump wrote on Truth Social:
IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!
Not so, said the Iranians. They’re going to Doha for one reason: to get their frozen assets.
“Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied Monday that its negotiators would be meeting with U.S. officials in Qatar on Tuesday after President Trump announced the talks would resume at Tehran’s request,” CBS News reported:
Both sides exchanged strikes over the weekend, testing the fragile ceasefire.
Iran’s president said Monday that the country is set to receive $6 billion in frozen assets currently held in Qatar, according to Iranian state media. The unfreezing of Iran’s financial assets is one of the conditions in the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding.
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s negotiators, “described Iran’s priority as ensuring that the memorandum is carried out before any final negotiations with the United States begin,” The New York Times explained:
The United States, he noted, had issued the necessary licenses for Iranian oil sales under a provision of the memorandum, and Tehran was monitoring their implementation.
“We have not yet entered the stage of negotiating a final agreement,” Baghaei said, CBS reported. “We will not have any negotiation meetings with the U.S. side at any level.”
Iran Will Demine Strait
Another leader who went too far in making claims with which Iran disagrees is French President Emmanuel Macron.
He reported on X that Oman and France would collaborate in helping remove the mines that Iran placed in the strait.
Noting that Oman and France are “strengthening” and working on “de-escalation” in the Gulf, Macron wrote that “we have decided to collaborate jointly, in coordination with our partners, on demining the strait to secure maritime routes and ensure free and unconditional passage through the Strait of Hormuz.”
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As with Trump’s apparently precipitous claim, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said that isn’t happening either. Iran controls the strait.
“Macron has said that he is cooperating with his partners in demining the Strait of Hormuz. According to the Islamabad memorandum of understanding, demining is carried out solely by Iran and by no other country, and we fundamentally do not permit any such thing,” he wrote on X:
The situation is sensitive and complex. We strongly advise France not to complicate it further with its provocations.
Why France is sticking its proboscis into the mix is unclear, but in any event, as CBS News observed, the MOU gives Iran the job of clearing mines.
The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the tactical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days.
Iran Must Have Bomb
The latest contretemps over who is meeting with whom comes after a weekend of fighting and an opinion on Iran’s Fars state media site that the country must build a nuclear weapon to deter American aggression.
Iran targeted eight American facilities at a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain and the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait to retaliate for U.S. strikes on its coastal military facilities. But that strike, the U.S. Central Command said, retaliated for Iran’s drone-striking a Singapore-flagged tanker in the Gulf.
President Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran fired four drones, but that U.S. forces knocked down three.
Thus far, U.S. officials have not reported any American casualties or major damage from the strikes.
Building such a bomb would violate the MOU, in which Iran committed that it would not seek to build a nuclear weapon.
As for the cost of the war to American taxpayers, when it stopped counting, the Iran War Cost Tracker reported a final figure of $113.3 billion, about $1 billion per day.
If that figure held true for the weekend, then the fighting cost $2 billion. That cost doesn’t include the continuing expense of keeping U.S. forces in the region on high alert.
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