ISLAMABAD: For a few hours in Tehran, the Qatari mediators allowed themselves to believe the worst might be over.
After weeks of shuttling between two bitter foes, and an exhausting day of talks with Iranian officials, the small delegation saw a deal coming together that would include: an extended ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a framework for nuclear talks.
Then, as they prepared to fly back to Doha in the early hours of Thursday, US fighter jets hit Iranian targets in southern Iran. By the time the American bombing stopped, Iran was firing missiles and drones at US bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The Qataris looked on from the tarmac. For almost seven hours, until 7am, they waited on the runway as the fragile diplomacy they had tried to foster risked unravelling at double speed. “It was a rollercoaster,” said a person briefed on the talks.
The episode captured the central tension in a month-long diplomatic effort to keep the US and Iran from sliding back into war. Every time mediators appeared close to a breakthrough, another strike, threat or political intervention stymied their efforts to get the deal over the line.
The one-page, 14-point memorandum of understanding being negotiated by Qatar and Pakistan was intended to extend the April 8 ceasefire.
But getting it over the line meant bridging almost half a century of distrust, US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability and impatience for a quick result, and Tehran’s need for any compromise to look legitimate at home.
One diplomat said one of the biggest challenges for mediators was the difference in “style”, contrasting Trump’s haste for a deal with Iran’s need for “process — weeks or years of negotiation”.
“It needs for it [the deal] to be seen to be legitimate in the Iranian system, and that it did not just go and capitulate,” the diplomat said.
The ‘piece of garbage’
One crucial turning point came in mid-May. Talks had floundered after the April 8 ceasefire and a follow-up meeting in Islamabad led by US vice-president JD Vance.
The truce appeared to be unravelling, with Trump warning that it was on “massive life support” and describing Iran’s latest proposal as a “piece of garbage”.
The risk of a return to war was rising despite back-channel negotiations.
Within a few days, Washington asked Qatar to step up. Until then Doha had been playing a supporting role to Pakistan, the surprise choice to lead the mediation, alongside Egypt and Turkey.
Qatar had carved out a role as one of Washington’s preferred channels to adversaries from Hamas to the Taliban and Venezuela’s Bolivarian regime. When the war started, Qatar, like other Gulf states, was targeted by Iran, and had taken a back seat in the diplomatic push to end the war.
But after Trump’s warning that the ceasefire was on the brink of collapse, the Qatari delegation, led by veteran mediators Ali al-Thawadi and Hamad al-Kubaisi, headed to Tehran, flying via Turkey in order to keep the mission secret.
Pakistan, newer to the mediation role, brought its own access to Trump’s circle after helping secure the April truce, which was followed by the highest-level direct talks between Iran and the US since 1979.
The trust problem
The overriding problem for the mediators was attempting to build even rudimentary trust between the two sides.
The Iranians “were very suspicious” of Trump’s intentions, people briefed on the talks said. Iran was twice attacked by the US and Israel when in the midst of talks — first before Israel’s 12-day June war last year and again when the US and Israel strikes launched the latest conflict on February 28.
“They felt like this is another precursor to attacks . . . that the Americans keep shifting positions, that there’s no real commitment,” said the person briefed on the talks. “And so part of the mediators’ job was building that trust.”
By the time the delegation departed Tehran in mid-May, the mediators felt confident they had a good proposal that had the buy-in of US officials.
But that optimism was dashed, however, when they were informed as they left Iran that Trump was considering striking.
In a bid to keep the diplomacy on track, Qatari, Saudi and Emirati leaders called the US president, telling him the mediators were close to a deal and urging him to keep his finger off the trigger.
Trump heeded their counsel. He posted that same day that he had suspended an attack on Iran scheduled for the following day as “serious negotiations were now” taking place with Tehran.
The next morning, Tuesday May 19, the Qatar delegation flew to Washington to brief Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, having spent months working with the last two on Trump’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Negotiating against the Trump clock
Then Trump set a deadline. The US president made it clear to the mediators that he needed the Iranian response by the weekend or he would not hold back on attacks. The Qataris and Pakistani negotiators prepared to head back to Tehran.
But again, the threat of renewed war hung over the mission. The night before mediators were expected in Tehran, the Qataris and the Pakistanis were informed by two western states that Israel was considering striking Iran later that week, two people briefed on the matter said.
Qatari officials frantically called the US and other allies to secure guarantees that Israel would not attack while their team was in Tehran, one of the people said. When those assurances came, they returned to Iran, landing in Tehran on the morning of Friday May 22.
The mediators spent hours locked in discussions with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi as they haggled over the details.
The key issues were Iran’s demand for a commitment to permanently end the war; securing assurances that Tehran would discuss with the US handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium; and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz.
Both sides felt they had the upper hand. Iran had effectively closed the strait after the US and Israel ignited the war on February 28, causing the worst global energy crisis in decades.
Emboldened by its newfound leverage, it had been insisting that it would charge a fee to ships passing the chokepoint.
But to get a deal over the line, the mediators needed to convince Iran to set that demand aside, at least for the 60-day ceasefire extension.
Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s military chief, landed in Tehran on that same Friday evening to add to the push. “The Pakistanis were well briefed and the face of the process, thanks to the field marshal’s relationship with Trump, but the Qataris quietly did most of the heavy lifting to bridge the two sides,” said one western diplomat.
Trump had repeatedly insisted that Iran would have to hand over its stockpile of 440kg uranium enriched close to weapons-grade level. Iran finally agreed to commit to discuss diluting the uranium or handing over the stockpile before the Qatari delegation left in the early hours of Saturday May 23.
In return, the US agreed to a phased process of sanctions relief that would be dependent on the progress of talks towards a final deal.
By Saturday evening, Trump said that a deal had “largely been negotiated” and would “be announced shortly”.
But the parties continued to haggle. Ghalibaf and Araghchi travelled to Doha for yet more talks with Qatari mediators on Monday May 25, along with the Iranian central bank governor.
“The Iranians are very diligent negotiators; they check every word and negotiate the meaning of it,” said one of the people briefed on the talks.
Even after that, the Iranians did not sign off on the agreement as expected. Frustrated with the delay, the Trump administration amended language related to the details of reopening the strait and nuclear issues.
The Israel complication
In a bid to keep the diplomatic process on track, the Qatari mediators got back on a plane — this time to Miami where they spent a day in talks with Witkoff and Kushner. Their aim was to underline the urgency of getting a deal completed.
On June 6, Pakistan’s interior minister Mohsin Naqvi, a close Munir confidant, was in Tehran on his fourth trip since the war started, carrying a letter for Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
But worse was to come. Israel’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to bomb Hizbollah targets in Beirut, escalating the conflict with the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon.
Iranian media reported that Tehran, which has insisted that conflict be included in its ceasefire with the US, had suspended talks with Washington as a result on June 1.
That caused Trump to get on the phone to Netanyahu that Monday afternoon and deliver his partner in the war an expletive-laden tongue-lashing. That seemed to calm the situation.
But the following weekend, Israel and Iran exchanged fire for the first time since the April 8 truce, after Israeli forces launched strikes against a building in southern Beirut, a stronghold of Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement that is Iran’s most important proxy.
The tit-for-tat ended after Trump intervened saying Israel and Hizbollah had agreed the “shooting will stop”.
The Apache setback
One potential deal-breaker had been dealt with, and on Tuesday last week the mediators again thought they were on the verge of a deal. But another quickly emerged after Trump blamed Iran for shooting down a US Apache helicopter the previous night.
The crew was rescued and Iran signalled it was a mistake, but Trump said he had to respond. It prompted two consecutive overnight exchanges of fire — including the clash that left the Qatari mediators stranded at the airport.
Once the Qataris had returned to Doha, a regional push was made to convince Trump a good deal was almost finalised and to hold off on further strikes.
According to Pakistani and Arab diplomats, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Pakistan’s powerful military chief all put in calls to the US leader to urge him against more attacks.
Trump began his Thursday threatening more strikes and warning that American troops could seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub. But within hours, he said the final points of a deal with Tehran had been approved by “all parties” in what he called “a great settlement of the war”.
Throughout the week of skirmishes, the diplomacy continued in the background, with lower-level US and Iranian officials holding talks in Doha.
But on Friday, Trump, who had spent the week oscillating between saying a deal was close and venting his frustration at Iran, furiously claimed Tehran was distorting the agreement.
It again raised fears that he would attack just as mediators were preparing for a preliminary signing in Switzerland over the weekend. “The biggest obstacle to the deal had been the negative media and lobbying campaigns against the deal by both sides,” said the person familiar with the talks.
The final push
It was after Trump said on Saturday the MoU would be signed on the Sunday that Qatari negotiators returned to Tehran.
At that point Israel struck Beirut again — prompting another angry call from Trump, saying the strike “should not have happened” given it was responding to a “very small and meaningless” strike by Hizbollah.
Crucially, he added that there should be no more attacks by Israel “anywhere in Lebanon”.
The Qataris, for their part, were attempting to convince the Iranians not to retaliate.
They spent 17 hours in Tehran, at one point pausing to watch a football match at the World Cup in the US.
At another point, the Qataris threatened to walk away after the Iranians continued to push for tweaks to the language.
The Qataris warned that if a deal was not agreed before Trump went into the UFC event at the White House to celebrate his 80th birthday, they risked facing further American strikes the following day.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was the first leader who announced a deal had been reached just before 1am Tehran time.
“It was very intense,” the person briefed on the talks said. “It was exhausting, but there was relief. It’s like when you finish a marathon, you are fully exhausted.
“There’s cautious optimism — there’s still five days until the signing.”
Courtesy: Financial Times
