The United States and Iran have both sent delegations to Doha, Qatar, but the two sides are giving sharply different accounts of what those meetings are actually for.
President Trump announced the meeting Monday in an all-caps social media post: "IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING. IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!" Speaking to reporters, Trump was less definitive, stating that the "meeting in Doha is going to be perhaps important, perhaps not."
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner would fly to Doha for high-level meetings this week. Trump also claimed the U.S. is close to achieving its main military objective. "We're winning militarily. It's almost won militarily, I would say. And it's really very simple. It's the denuclearisation of Iran. We don't want them to have a nuclear weapon, and they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. And they've agreed to that," he said.
Iran's Foreign Ministry rejected any suggestion of direct talks with American officials. Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran's priority is ensuring the implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed this month to halt the four-month U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Iran said its expert delegation was traveling to Doha specifically to discuss the release of frozen Iranian assets with Qatari intermediaries.
According to Al Jazeera, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told reporters that discussions in Doha would focus on "the implementation of provisions of the memorandum of understanding, including the provision concerning the release of Iran's restricted assets, and these discussions will be held with the Qatari side."
Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said Tuesday that no frozen assets have yet been transferred to Iran. "So far, no funds have been transferred," Al Ansari said. "Qatar is not the owner of these funds," he added. Iran's president had said $6 billion would be released under the memorandum of understanding.
Both sides have accused each other of violating the MoU, which calls for an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon. A separate agreement signed four days ago between Israel and Lebanon links an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon to the disarming of Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. Analysts told CBS News that this could mean Israel occupying southern Lebanon indefinitely, further complicating a full U.S.-Iran peace deal.
A senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told CBS News that commercial ships are unlikely to ever move through the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait as freely as they did before the war.
Eleven historical buildings in Iran have been damaged during the conflict, according to Reuters, despite UNESCO sharing coordinates of heritage sites with all parties. UNESCO said it had not been consulted about which cultural sites to avoid and called on all parties to respect international law regarding the protection of cultural property.
