Trump says U.S. and Iran will hold talks in Qatar on Tuesday

Donald Trump said the United States and Iran would meet Tuesday in Doha, putting Qatar at the center of a fast-moving test of whether the weekend’s strikes were a brief escalation or the opening of a wider conflict. The talks were cast as a chance to lock in a fragile pause after several days of tit-for-tat attacks that rattled shipping, markets and regional security.

Iran did not confirm the Doha meeting. Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said no technical meetings of the working groups were planned for this week, while also saying consultations with Qatar were continuing as scheduled. The split in public messaging underscored how much still hung on diplomacy between Washington and Tehran, even as both sides tried to keep the channel through Doha open.

U.S. officials said the two sides had agreed to “stand down for now” and that “technical talks are slated to continue on all areas of the MOU,” including the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz. Another senior U.S. official said the attack halt was tied to plans for a meeting in Qatar’s capital, and Reuters-cited reporting said Iranian and U.S. technical teams working on the implementation of an interim peace deal were expected to meet there in the coming days.

The Strait of Hormuz remained the central pressure point. The waterway carries a large share of global oil shipments, and the weekend strikes raised alarms that the fighting could spill into sea lanes far beyond the immediate battlefield. U.S. officials said vessels would be allowed to move freely again, a sign that both governments were trying to contain the confrontation before it forced a broader shutdown of traffic through the chokepoint.

Markets were already reacting. Oil prices rose on the renewed fighting and on uncertainty over whether the ceasefire arrangement would hold, adding a commercial layer to the security stakes around Doha. For Washington, the talks also carried a direct interest in keeping energy flows steady and avoiding a confrontation that could pull in shipping partners, alarm Gulf allies and complicate U.S. posture in the region.