U.S.-Iran negotiations at a standstill

Steve Holland, Ariba Shahid and Parisa Hafezi

REUTERS

President Donald Trump discussed a new Iranian proposal on resolving the war with Tehran with his top national security aides on April 27, with the conflict currently in a stalemate and energy supplies from the region reduced.

Iranian sources disclosed Tehran’s latest proposal earlier on April 27, which would set aside discussion of Iran’s nuclear program until the war is ended and disputes over shipping from the Gulf are resolved. That is unlikely to satisfy Washington, which says nuclear issues must be dealt with from the outset.

Work has not halted to bridge gaps between the United States and Iran, sources from mediator Pakistan said, despite the absence of face-to-face diplomacy after Trump called off a trip by his envoys over the weekend.

Hopes of reviving peace efforts have receded since Trump scrapped a visit on April 25 by his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, where Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shuttled in and out twice over the weekend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, meets with Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of Iran, on April 27.

DMITRI LOVETSKY/POOL VIA REUTERS

Araghchi also visited Oman over the weekend and went to Russia on April 27, where he met President Vladimir Putin and received words of support from a long-standing ally.

Iran last year sealed a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Moscow. Russia is building two new nuclear units at Bushehr, the site of Iran’s only nuclear power plant, and Iran supplied Russia with Shahed drones for use against Ukraine.

Oil prices also resumed their upward march on April 27, hitting a two-week high. Trump met his national security team earlier that morning.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the president or his national security team,” said White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

“What I will reiterate is that the president’s red lines with respect to Iran have been made very, very clear, not just to the American public, but also to them as well.”

Senior Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the proposal carried by Araghchi to Islamabad over the weekend envisioned talks in stages, with the nuclear issue to be set aside at the start. A first step would require ending the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and providing guarantees that Washington cannot start it up again. Then negotiators would resolve the U.S. blockade and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran aims to reopen under its control.

Only then would talks look at other issues, including the longstanding dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, with Iran still seeking some kind of U.S. acknowledgment of its right to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes.

In a sign that no face-to-face meetings are planned any time soon, streets reopened in Islamabad, which had been locked down for a week in anticipation of talks that never took place.

Shipping snarled by both sides

Iran has largely blocked all shipping apart from its own from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. This month, the United States began blockading Iranian ships.

Six tankers loaded with Iranian oil have been forced back to Iran by the U.S. blockade in recent days, shiptracking data shows, underscoring the impact the war is having on traffic.

Between 125 and 140 ships usually crossed in and out of the strait daily before the war, but only seven have done so in the past day, according to Kpler ship-tracking data and satellite analysis from SynMax, and none of them were carrying oil bound for the global market.

With his approval ratings falling, Trump faces domestic pressure to end the unpopular war.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on April 27 that Iran’s leadership was humiliating the United States and getting U.S. officials to travel to Pakistan and then leave without results, in an unusually abrupt rebuke over the conflict.

“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” he said.

“An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible,” he added at the venue in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Nations to discuss fossil fuel exit

Around 60 governments, including Brazil, Germany, Canada and Nigeria, will hold the first international meeting this week to discuss phasing out fossil fuels, as the war upends global oil and gas markets and sends prices soaring.

The gathering of ministers and officials in Santa Marta, Colombia, which starts on April 28, will focus on practical steps to shift economies away from fossil fuels, rather than setting new global targets of the kind agreed at U.N. climate summits. “We’re not negotiating ambitions, we’re not negotiating commitments. This really is about sharing how you do this,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, climate minister for the Netherlands, which is co-organizing the meeting with Colombia.

Talks will also address how to create investment conditions for industries to switch from gas to electricity, and how to reform fossil fuel subsidies.

The world’s top two polluters – China and the United States – are notably absent. Saudi Arabia and other major Middle Eastern oil and gas producers are also not attending.

The Israeli military began carrying out strikes in eastern Lebanon on April 27, expanding the scope of its bombing campaign during a ceasefire that has failed to fully halt hostilities with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

The strikes on Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley marked the first time the area has been hit since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire came into force on April 16, significantly reducing the pace of attacks without entirely stopping the exchanges of fire.

Israel has continued to carry out strikes across southern Lebanon, and its troops are occupying a strip of the country’s south, destroying homes they describe as infrastructure being used by Hezbollah.