Tehran has dismissed Qatar's latest ideas for ending the war with the US and Israel as unacceptable, saying they did not amount to a formal offer, despite a Qatari push for a fresh peace deal. An official briefed on the negotiations said Qatar presented a new draft proposal on Sunday, which Iran was reviewing and was expected to respond to by the end of the week.
Qatar and Pakistan have led mediation efforts to end the eight-month conflict, which has disrupted global shipping and oil supplies and recently spread to Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The proposal presented by Qatar sets a 7-day timeline addressing both Tehran's and Washington's concerns, laying out daily confidence-building steps that each side must take, the official briefed on the negotiations said.
The timeline could begin early next week and several countries would act as guarantors of the deal, the official added. Shortly afterwards, a senior Iranian official involved in the talks said Qatar had presented only "unacceptable ideas and not an offer", and that Tehran's policy on showing no flexibility over the nuclear issue remained unchanged.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Wednesday that Tehran remained in close contact with intermediaries to review ideas that could ensure the implementation of its own 7-day proposal aimed at ending the war in the Middle East. He said Iran continued to give diplomacy a chance to succeed, adding that Tehran's 7-day plan could be implemented in less than a week.
Washington wants Iran's decades-long nuclear programme to be part of negotiations to end the war from the outset, while Iran says its conditions - which include an end to the US blockade of Iranian ports and the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil exports - must be met first.
Iran rejects Western concerns that its nuclear programme is military in nature. In late September, Iran presented its 7-day proposal under which Araqchi said the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important energy shipping channels, could be reopened if certain conditions were met.
US President Donald Trump rejected it, prompting further Qatari mediation. The draft discussed in Tehran on Sunday was different from that proposal, the official briefed on the negotiations said, though the details of the latest plan were not immediately clear.
The official had previously told of earlier mediation efforts to end the war that the US and Israel launched on 28 February, which helped produce an interim peace agreement in June, but it quickly unravelled. In recent weeks, Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi forces have launched repeated attacks against Saudi Arabia - a key US ally and the world's largest crude exporter - opening a new front in the eight-month-old war.
Oil prices rose more than 1% to more than $115 per barrel on Wednesday after a Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery, Ras Tanura, stoking concerns over supply risks. Fighting with the Houthis intensified last month as the group advanced against Saudi-backed forces towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another important shipping lane.
The official briefed on the negotiations said there were concerns ahead of Sunday's meeting in Tehran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting for another term in a general election, could resume attacks on the Islamic Republic this week.