Qatar pushes for U.S.-Iran deal under shadow of Trump’s threats to resume attacks

President ⁠Donald Trump said Friday that the war with Iran is “going to get wrapped up soon.”

Speaking to Kansas ‌City radio station KCMO ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the president said “it’s going to get wrapped ⁠up soon,” without specifying how. 

“We need a guarantee there’ll never be a nuclear weapon,” he added.

The commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, Adm. Brad Cooper, reiterated his longstanding assertions on Friday that Iran’s navy is “at the bottom of the sea” and that southern commercial shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz are clear of Iranian mines and safe to navigate.

In a video posted on social media, Cooper said the U.S. had helped Gulf partners export more than 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil since the summer, while the U.S. naval blockade had prevented Iran from exporting any oil through the strait.

Cooper said he had recently flown over the strait and seen U.S. military “assets in the air and on the water.”

“What I didn’t see,” said Cooper, was Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “out there at all. They patrolled the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters for decades, harassing and threatening and seizing commercial vessels at will, but they were not out there because Iran’s navy is all at the bottom of the sea.”

Cooper renewed the claim made by President Trump and the Pentagon since late August that “we also successfully cleared the strait’s internationally recognized primary transit routes of Iranian sea mines. And today, U.S. forces remain highly vigilant and present to ensure that all primary transit routes in the Strait of Hormuz remain free and clear.”

His comments came a day after Iran’s navy claimed four vessels had struck sea mines and been disabled as the attempted to transit the strait via the U.S.-backed southern route. The U.K. navy’s Maritime Trade Operations center said Thursday evening, meanwhile, that a tanker was struck by a projectile in the strait. 

It was unclear if the ship reported by UKMTO to have been hit was one of the four Iran said had hit mines.

A source familiar with the ongoing diplomacy confirmed to CBS News that Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Friday to convey the latest edits to a draft proposal to end the U.S. war with Iran. 

The source said there were indications of progress being made.

A draft was presented by Qatari mediators last Sunday, and a response from Iran is expected by the weekend. The aim of the proposal is to avert a return to U.S. military action against Iran, which President Trump has threatened multiple times in recent weeks.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Friday that two oil tankers had been halted after unspecified “incidents” as they attempted to transit what Tehran considers an unauthorized route through the Strait of Hormuz.

“Two offending oil tankers, one in the eastern part and the other in the western part of the Strait of Hormuz, which were attempting to pass through the unauthorized route, encountered incidents and were brought to a halt in the waters south of the strait,” the IRGC said in a statement.

Iran has repeatedly warned shippers that using the southern route through the waterway, which has been promoted by the U.S., puts them at risk as the regime deems it an illegal passage.

The tankers had “switched off all their navigation and positioning systems and, with the support of the terrorist U.S. military, were attempting to exit through the unauthorized route,” the IRGC statement said.

The IRGC did not specify the nature of the incidents, which came a day after Iran’s armed forces said at least four tankers had been forced to stop in the area after hitting sea mines.

The U.K. navy’s Maritime Trade Operations center said Thursday evening that a tanker was struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz. It was unclear if the ship reported by UKMTO to have been hit was one of the four Iran said had hit mines, but the timing of the report suggested it could have been a separate incident.

CBS/AFP 

Qatari officials returned to Iran on Friday to push for a peace deal between Tehran and Washington, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, along with Reuters and AFP, reported.

The talks have been coordinated with the U.S., an official told Reuters.

The delegation is led by a senior adviser to Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister and is scheduled to meet with senior Iranian officials, IRNA said, adding that the discussions would focus on bilateral relations between Iran and Qatar, as well as developments in the region.

An official briefed on the latest diplomacy confirmed to CBS News Wednesday that Qatari mediators had presented Iran with a new draft deal to end the war. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Qatar had only come with “unacceptable” ideas, and that Tehran would not change its stance on the nuclear issue, something Washington wants included in negotiations from the start.

Tehran wants the U.S. to first lift its blockade of Iranian ports and to drop sanctions limiting the country’s gas and oil sales.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Wednesday in a post on X that Tehran “continues to give diplomacy a chance to succeed” and is working with mediators to review ideas that Tehran included in a proposal floated last month, which was summarily rejected by President Trump but which Iran still wants to see used as the basis for a new ceasefire agreement.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump said a letter from Vice President JD Vance to Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei — which was reported by multiple outlets as an attempt to restart peace negotiations — was an outreach intended only to help get medical supplies into Iran. 

Iran has yet to reply to the letter, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The U.S. Department of Defense has added two more service member deaths to its official account of casualties since the war with Iran started more than eight months ago, bringing the overall death toll to 23. 

Both of the newly noted deaths on the Defense Casualty Analysis System portal were noncombat related. In total the DCAS portal says 11 service members have been killed by enemy fire during the war, and 12 others have died under circumstances deemed nonhostile, which includes accidents and sickness.

Both of the service members recently added as nonhostile deaths were airmen, including one who died of an illness and another from unspecified causes that remain under investigation, The Washington Post quoted the Air Force as saying.

The two deaths added to the DCAS system are listed under Overseas Operations, which includes deaths recorded by the Pentagon after it stopped using the name Operation Epic Fury for the offensive against Iran in May, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the operation over.   

The Saudi-led coalition said Friday that it had intercepted and destroyed a drone in the Mecca region fired by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

“A drone launched by the terrorist Houthi militia has been intercepted and destroyed in the Mecca region,” the coalition wrote in a post on X.

The Houthis denied any attempt to strike Saudi Arabia on Friday, the Reuters news agency reported.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on social media that the group hadn’t conducted any operations aimed at Saudi territory, adding that the Houthis only target Saudi oil facilities and military bases.

CBS/AFP

A tanker was struck Thursday evening by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.K. navy’s Maritime Trade Operations center reported, after Iran’s navy claimed four ships had struck sea mines in the area.

UKMTO said the ship hit by a projectile was exiting the strait along the southern route, which the U.S. has encouraged international shipping companies to use, when it came under fire. 

“There are no reported injuries to the crew or environmental impact … at this time,” UKMTO said. 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its military claimed in two separate announcements earlier Thursday that four tankers had struck sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, causing fires. 

It was unclear if the ship reported by UKMTO to have been struck by a projectile was one of the four Iran said had hit mines, but the timing of the report from the maritime monitor suggested it could have been a separate incident.

Iran has not yet responded to a letter sent by Vice President JD Vance to the secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, according to the semi-official Tasnim News agency, which is closely affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Tasnim said in a Thursday post on its official Telegram social media account that Tehran was not prepared to drop any of its core conditions for a ceasefire, which include lifting the American blockade of Iran’s ports, easing sanctions and giving Iran access to its frozen financial assets held abroad, among other things.

Multiple news outlets have reported that Vance’s letter to Rezaei was an attempt to restart peace negotiations, but President Trump said Wednesday that it was a focused outreach intended only to help get medical supplies into Iran.