Qatari mediators present Iran with new draft deal in Tehran

An official briefed on the talks says Tehran is weighing the draft and will reply by the end of the week.

Qatari mediators have presented Iran with a new draft deal in Tehran. Iran's state TV said the US blockade of Iran must be lifted before talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz can go ahead. Iran is also open to a shorter US proposal timeline, if its conditions are met. Iran's supreme leader, Khamenei, has called for conditions before the war can end.

The military picture runs alongside the talks. Iran's navy said a tanker hit sea mines east of the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM, the US military command for the region, said US forces and regional partners control the strait and that Iran does not. Washington is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and 10,000 more personnel toward the Persian Gulf. The blockade, Tehran says, has reduced Iran's imports by 25 per cent. Chris Wright, the US Energy Secretary, said the Iran war has come at a cost.

Earlier rounds of talks in this conflict have not produced a signed deal. Talks stalled for most of September and October. Trump contradicted the September 29 talks within hours, and those talks collapsed without a deal. A written draft under consideration, with a reply due by the end of the week, is a firmer marker than the verbal exchanges that came before it. The new draft follows Iran's conditional openness and Khamenei's call, so it fits a flexibility track that is still fragile rather than the stalled pattern of recent weeks. Any reply from Tehran will be read against a military track that has kept pace with the diplomatic one, or moved ahead of it.