US-Iran talks wobble as senior clerics call for assassination of ‘criminal’ Trump

Doha/Dubai: Iran said it would not meet with top US envoys who flew to the region following an outbreak of hostilities, clouding the prospects for a lasting peace between the two countries.

Iranian officials on Tuesday (Qatar time) also said the two sides must still sort out the terms of a ceasefire they signed two weeks ago before they could tackle more difficult topics, such as possible limits to its nuclear program.

The developments indicated the two sides are far apart on key pillars of the initial framework, which calls for Iran to lift its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for financial incentives, and sets up 60 days of negotiations to work out a permanent peace deal.

Meanwhile, Iran’s most senior clerics have called for the assassination of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, London’s Telegraph reported.

In a 10-point statement, the Assembly of Experts said the killing of “the criminal American president” and “the wicked prime minister of the Zionist regime” was a religious duty. However, more than quarter of the members of the body did not sign the statement, and the Assembly’s secretariat distanced itself from the statement hours later, the Telegraph reported.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Doha for what the White House described as “high-level” talks, but Iran and host Qatar said the pair would meet with mediators, rather than the Iranians themselves.

“No meeting at any level with the American side has been scheduled for the coming days,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said.

The two countries were due to commence lower-level technical talks.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani affirmed his country’s continued mediation efforts and its support for all tracks of talks stemming from the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Shipping has partially resumed through the strait, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas before the war broke out on February 28.

But Iranian officials insisted on their right to manage traffic along with US ally Oman, which lies on the other side of the strategic waterway.

Iranian officials said they would impose tolls in mid-August, when the 60-day period expires.

“The sovereignty of the Strait of Hormuz lies with Iran and Oman, and traffic in the strait is subject to arrangements determined by Iran,” Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, said on state TV.

Despite the uncertainty, oil prices have fallen since the weekend, when the US bombed Iranian military facilities in response to drone strikes on commercial ships and Iran attacked US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain.

Vulnerable economies, however, could remain at risk from food and fuel price increases even after energy markets feel relief, the United Nations’ trade and development agency said on Tuesday.

The war pushed up global inflation and has put Trump under political pressure before midterm elections in November that will determine control of the US Congress. Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are both urging gasoline retailers to lower prices.

The interim deal between the US and Iran also provides for an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But Lebanon’s powerful parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah, cast doubt on a separate, US-brokered framework deal between Lebanon and Israel to halt that war. Analysts said the deal risks entrenching a stalemate by tying Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon to Hezbollah’s disarmament.

In their call for Trump and Netanyahu to be assassinated, the clerics on Assembly of Experts wrote that avenging the blood of Ali Khamenei – the supreme leader who was killed on the first day of the war – was “paramount”.

The Assembly of Experts is a body of more than 80 clerics constitutionally tasked with choosing and supervising the supreme leader.

“It is obligatory upon any duty-bound person who gains access to these criminals to send them to hell,” they said.

On Tuesday, Iranian newspaper Hamshahri ran a front page with Trump’s face in the crosshairs of a scope beneath the banner headline “revenge is certain”, the Telegraph reported

Reuters

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