US President Donald Trump has asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to manage a channel aimed at opening dialogue between Washington and Tehran as the kingdom seeks to avert further regional escalation, the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar reported on Tuesday.
Citing what it described as Western sources, the Beirut-based daily said Trump authorized bin Salman to manage contacts aimed at brokering an agreement with Tehran covering the nuclear file and sanctions.
According to the report, bin Salman argued to Trump that a US-Iran understanding was necessary for stability across the Middle East and warned that Israel could try to derail any diplomatic track through renewed military action.
Sources told the outlet that bin Salman had asked Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, during their September meeting in Riyadh about Tehran’s stance on a Saudi initiative toward Washington on a possible agreement with Iran. They said Larijani later sent a positive reply, while stressing that Tehran was not ready to make concessions.
Al-Akhbar also reported that Saudi officials contacted Iran’s leadership after the crown prince’s November 18 visit to the White House and agreed to hold a senior Saudi-Iranian meeting in Paris within 24 hours, to be followed by Saudi shuttle contacts between the United States and Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is due in Paris on Wednesday for talks with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot focused on Iran’s nuclear program and the status of two French citizens who, though released from prison, remain under travel restrictions and are staying at the French embassy in Tehran, France’s foreign ministry said.
There has been no indication of any parallel Saudi-Iranian meeting in Paris. Iran International could not independently verify al-Akhbar’s account.
The report comes as Iranian officials push back against reports that President Masoud Pezeshkian asked the Saudi crown prince to help revive nuclear talks with the United States.
Iran says Pezeshkian’s letter to the crown prince was a routine message on Hajj coordination, while Reuters reported last week, citing two sources familiar with the exchange, that the letter urged bin Salman to use his influence with Trump to restart stalled nuclear diplomacy.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said, “The president’s message to the Saudi crown prince had purely bilateral content,” and added that persistent “baseless speculation about it does nothing to advance national interests.”
Baghaei’s comments follow a rising domestic debate over whether Tehran is exploring indirect channels to Washington after a former lawmaker, Mostafa Kavakebian, said Pezeshkian had sent a message to Trump through bin Salman offering talks without preconditions with the permission of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
‘Mediator talk is secondary to US approach'
The government’s news agency IRNA said on Tuesday that the flurry of talk about third-party mediation reflects a broader tendency to read every letter, trip or phone call as a signal of imminent Iran-US negotiations, but argued that mediation is not the core issue.
In its analysis, the state news agency said Iranian officials view the real obstacle as the absence of a shared understanding with Washington on what talks would look like, adding that Tehran wants “equal and fair” diplomacy rather than what it describes as US attempts to dictate terms.
IRNA added that, from Iran’s perspective, questions about mediators such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt are secondary to whether the United States changes its approach and shows seriousness about balanced negotiations.
