More Stories
US President Donald Trump’s team is showing flexibility on the issue of low-level uranium enrichment as part of a potential deal with Iran, Politico reported Friday, citing two unnamed European officials and a former Trump administration official.
“Trump has been led to believe that low-level enrichment isn’t a threat – this is the compromise John Kerry made in the JCPOA,” the former official was quoted as saying, referring to the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated under former president Barack Obama.
Iran’s outreach to European powers has divided Tehran’s political commentators over whether engaging France, Germany and Britain serves any real purpose amid the Islamic Republic's talks with Washington.
Senior diplomats from Iran and the three European signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal met in Istanbul on Friday in what appears to be Tehran’s attempt to prevent a "snapback" of the UN sanctions that were suspended for ten years as part of that deal.
But the initiative is being questioned—somewhat surprisingly—by voices long known for advocating diplomacy, such as former lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh.
“There is no point in holding talks with Europeans. Iran’s only solution is to continue negotiations with the United States,” he told the conservative Nameh News on Friday
“Europe’s influence will remain insignificant as long as Trump is the President of the United States.”
Missed chances
A former head of parliament’s foreign policy committee, Falahatpisheh argued that Iran’s recent diplomatic overtures to the signatories of the 2015 deal are little more than a symbolic attempt to break out of the political impasse created by Washington.
“Iran should have negotiated with (US President) Trump during his first term,” Falahatpisheh said. “Unfortunately, Iranian officials are known for their costly and untimely decisions.”
This critique of past decisions may be shared by many in Tehran’s commentariat, but the way forward is certainly not.
“Even if talks with the Americans are paused or entangled in new complexities, we should not stop our negotiations with the Europeans,” political analyst Ali Bigdeli told the moderate outlet Fararu.
“The truth is that the Europeans are holding a hostage called the ‘trigger mechanism,’ which they can use to pressure us. If they don’t agree to postpone its activation by a year, they can use it as leverage against us,” he added.
Fearing the trigger
The trigger clause in the 2015 nuclear deal allows any signatory to reimpose lifted UN sanctions on Iran. The United States effectively forfeited that prerogative when the first Trump administration withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
It remains unclear whether the so-called snapback of sanctions was discussed in the Istanbul roundtable on Friday.
European officials described the event as a broad discussion about Tehran’s relationship with the West. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asserted that it had “nothing to do with negotiations with Washington.”
It did, as far as the media inside Iran are concerned. Whatever their view on the significance of the Istanbul meeting, most editorials linked it to the talks with the US.
“The position of the United States, which has initiated bilateral negotiations with Tehran, has somewhat sidelined Europe’s role,”Khabar Online wrote in an editorial on Friday.
“The nuclear negotiations are not merely a diplomatic engagement between Iran and Europe, but will more broadly affect the balance of power in the region,” it concluded.
The purpose of US President Donald Trump's trip to the Middle East was to sow discord among Islamic countries, said Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf on Friday.
"His behavior and rhetoric indicated that he aimed to sow discord among Islamic countries, and in a way, by creating threats and insecurity, he sought to sell their weapons and ammunition and pursue instability in the Islamic countries of Southwest Asia," Ghalibaf said after returning from Indonesia where he attended a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States.
Qatar's diplomatic prowess was lavished with praise by US President Donald Trump on his visit this week, suggesting the maverick mediator state may be set for more involvement on one of the region's trickiest dossiers: Iran.
Trump's remarks could herald a bigger role for Qatar as the US-Iran talks mediated by Oman appear headed for crunch time.
During a state dinner in Doha this week, Trump appeared to acknowledge Qatar’s crucial role in helping put off a US military strike on Iran amid high stakes talks over Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Trump praised Qatar’s leadership, specifically Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, for resisting calls within Washington and its allies to deliver a “hard blow” to Iran.
“Iran should seriously thank the emir of Qatar, because there are others who want to deal a hard blow to Iran, unlike Qatar,” Trump said. “Iran is very lucky to have the emir because he’s actually fighting for them. He doesn’t want us to do a vicious blow to Iran.”
Hashem Ahelbarra, a correspondent for Qatar-owned Al-Jazeera, said the comments strongly indicate a potential larger role for Doha in mediating a settlement between Tehran and Washington.
“They played quite a crucial role in mediating between the Iranians and the Americans in the past.”
Increased Qatari engagement would come at a time Iran is signaling openness to include its Sunni Arab neighbors in the nuclear negotiation process.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s visits to Riyadh and Doha earlier this month just ahead of the fourth round of nuclear talks held in Oman and Abu Dhabi highlight Tehran’s willingness to broaden the regional dialogue.
Perils of potential US-Iran military confrontation for Qatar
The gas-rich microstate has been key mediator for the United States in regional conflagrations from Afghanistan to Gaza.
Qatar, which has strong ties with the US and hosts Al Udeid Air Base—the largest US military base in the Middle East—opposes any US or Israeli military strike on Iran and its nuclear facilities, emphasizing the risk of regional destabilization, and seeks a diplomatic solution.
Iranian officials, including Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, have issued multiple warnings that Iran would retaliate against US military bases and interests in the region if Washington initiates a military strike.
“We have no hostility toward our neighboring countries, and brotherhood prevails among us. However, US bases located in the region's countries will be considered targets by us in the event of an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
Additionally, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, if a war breaks out.
In March 2025, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani warned that military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities could have catastrophic environmental consequences, such as contaminating the Persian Gulf’s waters.
This, he said, would imperil the water security of Qatar, along with other states like the UAE and Kuwait, all of which rely heavily on desalinated water from the Persian Gulf.
Good neighbors
Iran and Qatar, which share stewardship of South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field, have maintained close economic and political relations over the years.
Iran played a crucial role in helping Qatar maintain economic stability and connectivity with the outside world when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a blockade on Qatar in 2017, partly due to its close ties with Iran.
Tehran offered Doha diplomatic support, opened its airspace to Qatari aircraft, sent dozens of cargo planes and ships loaded with food, and expanded maritime trade routes to Qatar through its southern ports.
More recently, Doha initiated indirect talks between the US and Iran in 2023, focusing on potential compromises around Iran’s uranium enrichment levels in exchange for phased sanctions relief.
Qatar also played a pivotal role in facilitating the release of five American citizens detained in Iran in September 2023, hosting multiple rounds of indirect negotiations between US and Iranian officials in Doha.
The detainees were freed in exchange for five Iranians held in the US, alongside the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian funds previously frozen in South Korea.
The unfrozen funds, stipulated to be used solely for humanitarian purposes, such as purchasing food and medicine, were transferred to Qatari banks and Qatar committed to overseeing the disbursement of these funds to ensure compliance with US sanctions.
The funds, however, have not been made available to Iran due to a quiet agreement between Washington and Doha.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blamed Washington for obstructing the release of the funds during his meeting with the Emir of Qatar in Tehran in February and said Iran expected Doha to resist US pressure.
Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Islamic Republic's founder Ruhollah Khomeini, criticized US President Donald Trump’s remarks comparing the progress of Arab countries in the region to that of Iran under the clerical establishment.
“Yes, you have power. But this kind of speech makes people view you with greater skepticism" amid nuclear talks with Tehran, Khomeini said.
He defended Iran’s current diplomatic approach to the US, saying, “The decision to engage in indirect negotiations with the United States was a rational one made by the country’s leadership and officials. It may succeed, or it may fail due to the other side’s unreliability.”
“But for the president of the United States to speak in such a vulgar and demeaning tone in the midst of these negotiations is unacceptable. Although this type of rhetoric has been used before, it has not been expressed as it was recently,” he added.
