Missiles strike Qatari LNG tanker hours after Tehran granted safe passage

Unidentified missiles struck a Pakistan-bound Qatari LNG tanker near the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, hours after the ship had received direct clearance and safe-passage approval from Tehran. The attack came despite Qatar mediating intensively between Washington and Iran, and it did not stop the mediation: indirect talks in Doha ran into a third day on Sunday, with officials from the Gulf states described as "braced for the worst" while waiting for Washington's response to an Iranian proposal that could reopen the strait before the US midterm elections on Tuesday.

The details of the arrangement now on the table are unusually concrete for a war that began with a joint US-Israeli attack in February. Qatar is trying to negotiate the release of more than $6bn in Iranian assets; the release would be sequenced with the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the restart of nuclear negotiations. Iran has already agreed to compress the timetable for this sequence from seven days to two days.

The sequence matters because each side wants proof of the other's compliance before committing. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that Tehran had offered to open the strait within two days of the US lifting its blockade on oil ships, unblocking the frozen assets and ending sanctions on Iranian oil exports. But he confirmed there are no plans for direct talks with Washington — and he is not even attending the Doha mediation himself, delegating other Iranian diplomats while travelling to Turkmenistan on Monday.

The Iranian position on the nuclear file, meanwhile, has hardened rather than softened with proximity to a deal. Ali Nikzad, deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, said: "Our enemies must understand that the Iranian nation has made a decision not to negotiate on the nuclear issue under any circumstances." Araghchi himself framed the choice as conditional on Washington's "rationality" — Iran is ready for both defence and diplomacy.

On the American side, the signals are similarly mixed. Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US had knocked out much of Iran's military but still had to "take care of" one or two targets, while calling negotiations to end the war "going fine but you know they're not very reliable." Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US was open to a diplomatic solution. And Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei disclosed that he had received a letter from US vice-president JD Vance seeking to revive talks — noting a positive change in "tone" but saying he had yet to respond.

The UAE's envoy Anwar Gargash captured the regional mood: another round of escalation serves no one's interests, and relations with Iran are essential "because Iran is our neighbour and we do not want to see it get caught up in a prolonged crisis." Gulf states have learned in the past year what prolonged crisis means for them — their tankers burn in the strait regardless of clearance papers.

The proposal now sits in Washington with days to spare before the midterms. On the evidence of Friday, a safe-passage guarantee from Tehran is worth about as much as a safe-passage guarantee from anyone else in this war.