Qatar’s PM Heads to Tehran to Revive Mediation as Hormuz Standoff Drags On
Qatar prime minister and the foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will travel to Tehran on Thursday. This is another effort to begin diplomacy again between Iran and the United States.
The move comes after Washington warned of sanctions on Tehran’s trading partners. This warning caused arguments between the two enemies.
The visit puts Doha again in the middle of efforts to reduce the tension in a war that is now in its sixth month. The fighting has mostly stopped. There is no real solution in sight.
Qatar, a neighbor of Iran in the Gulf region also has an US military base. Qatar has been a channel between the two sides, during the whole conflict. Qatar helped bring about the ceasefire in June that stopped the fighting for a time but that agreement failed.
According to Iran’s Foreign Ministry, spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said talks would focus on bilateral ties, regional developments and the continuation of Qatar’s mediation initiatives.
Qatari government spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Sheikh Mohammed would press Iranian officials on de-escalation measures and on restoring “freedom of navigation” through the Strait of Hormuz to how it stood before the war began on 28 February.
Control of the strait, through which roughly a fifth of global oil supplies once flowed, remains the central sticking point. Iran has continued to treat the waterway as leverage, reportedly seeking to charge passing vessels a transit fee — a demand Washington has rejected.
A separate arrangement between Iran and Oman over managing the strait appears unresolved: while an IRGC spokesperson claimed the two countries had reached mutually acceptable terms, a senior Iranian source told Reuters the details were still being negotiated.
Vessel traffic through Hormuz remains sharply reduced, with tracking firm Kpler recording just five crossings on 25 August, a nearly 29 percent drop from the previous day.
The UN’s International Maritime Organization says the strait has recorded 70 incidents since the war began, killing 19 seafarers.
Adding to the diplomatic tangle, Iran’s military says it is still seeking answers from Doha over three Iranian pilots who went missing in March after their jets were shot down while striking a US base in Qatar.
