The United States has approved the draft memorandum of understanding that a Qatari delegation presented to Iran on Monday, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday — the clearest reported step yet towards a preliminary deal to end the US–Israeli war on Iran, now in its ninth month. “The mediation team briefed Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the memorandum, which they also approved,” the sources told the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, in a report carried by Turkey's Anadolu Agency.
Source: Anadolu Agency via Middle East Monitor
Hours earlier, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said Washington and Tehran were reviewing mediator proposals in real time after a Qatari delegation spent more than three hours in Tehran on Monday, with Qatar working towards an interim, trust-building deal — and Iran's armed forces chief setting out five conditions while its security chief called America's reply so far “not convincing”. The reported American approval of the draft is the next step beyond that review stage. Read the Qatar interim-deal report
The reported bargain: a nuclear concession for frozen assets, announced at the same moment
According to the same sources, Washington and Tehran have each made concessions on the two hardest files — Iran's nuclear programme and Iran's frozen assets. “Tehran will announce a concession on its nuclear program in return for Washington announcing the release of part of Iran's frozen assets,” the sources said, noting that the announcements would be made simultaneously. The arrangement would serve as a preliminary agreement and create the conditions for the two sides to resume full negotiations, Sharecast reported, summarising the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed account. Tehran has previously put the frozen assets it wants released at an estimated $12 billion — yaani about 1,200 crore dollars.
Source: Sharecast
What the reports do not contain matters as much as what they do. No American or Iranian official has confirmed the approval on the record, no text of the memorandum has been published, no signing date has been announced, and the size of the asset release and the exact nuclear concession — Al-Araby Al-Jadeed's sources spoke of Tehran making “certain changes to its nuclear doctrine” — remain unspecified. Bloomberg, cited by Sharecast, reported more cautiously through a diplomat briefed on the matter that the two sides were still reviewing the mediators' latest proposals on how to bridge their divides and avert another round of all-out war.
Tehran's counter-signals: “not convincing”, “excessive demands”, and the ball in America's court
Iran's public line on Tuesday pointed the other way. Security chief Mohsen Rezaei said on X that Washington's response to Iran's demands “was not convincing” and must fully and explicitly address Iran's seven conditions — among them a ceasefire across the region, the release of frozen assets, the lifting of oil sanctions, an end to the US naval blockade, war reparations and a withdrawal of US forces — “only in this case will the Strait of Hormuz be reopened”. The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, Major-General Ali Abdollahi, separately set out five conditions he called a roadmap to lasting regional security, including an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon and Gaza, and the complete lifting of sanctions.
Source: Islamabad Today (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed sources; Rezaei statement)
A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that the two countries were still far from reaching a deal to end the war, and that Tehran would not accept Washington's “excessive demands”. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Tehran had given Washington a “strong and rational response”, adding: “The ball is in the US' court,” according to Iranian state media. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi also said on Tuesday that Iran was neither waiting for the outcome of Tuesday's US midterm elections nor shaping its policies around them.
Source: Reuters
What is solid
- Qatar's mediation is active and on the record: a Qatari delegation met Iranian officials in Tehran for more than three hours on Monday, and spokesman Majed Al Ansari said on Tuesday that both sides are reviewing proposals, with Hormuz navigation “non-negotiable”.
- Iran's stated conditions are on the record from its own officials: Abdollahi's five conditions and Rezaei's seven conditions, including frozen-asset release and an end to the blockade before Hormuz reopens.
- Oil prices fell on Tuesday afternoon in London trade after the approval reports circulated (Brent $103.63 at 1435 GMT, Sharecast market data).
What is only claimed
- Whether Washington has actually approved the draft memorandum: the claim rests on unnamed sources close to the mediation team speaking to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, carried by Anadolu and market reports. No US or Iranian official has confirmed it, and a senior Iranian official told Reuters a deal remains far off.
Trump's parallel track: deal talk and a warning on Fox News
President Donald Trump spent election morning holding both tracks open. Asked on Fox News on Tuesday about his next move on Iran after the midterms, he said: “I'm not looking to kill lots of people, but if we have to, we'll have to. I'm not looking to do that.” In the same round of interviews he again raised striking Iran's fortified Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site — “that's not a big deal. We can do it in literally — we can do that in one hour” — while describing Monday night's strike on a newly completed Iranian air-defence installation on Qeshm Island as “just a minor attack. It wasn't war.” On Monday he had told Axios he was in “no rush” to decide on wider strikes, and posted on Truth Social that oil prices were “dropping like a rock… because people feel that there will not be a war with Iran”, adding: “Iran wants a settlement, as soon as possible. It could happen.”
Source: Anadolu Agency via Middle East Monitor (Fox News interview)
Oil prices: up on the Qeshm strikes, down on the deal reports
Crude markets swung both ways on Tuesday, pricing the war and the diplomacy in turn. Brent futures rose $1.84, or 1.76%, to $106.61 a barrel by 0744 GMT after the United States struck Iran's Qeshm Island, Reuters reported, fuelling concerns over escalation and risks to energy supplies; both benchmarks had dropped more than 7% on Monday as the Iranian–Qatari talks lifted hopes of an end to the war. By Tuesday afternoon the direction had flipped again: Brent was down 1.1% at $103.63 and WTI off 0.3% at $96.28 at 1435 GMT “following reports the US and Iran may be willing to make concessions to end the conflict”, Sharecast reported. Brent had ended October at its highest in six months, and every move in the strait still runs straight into fuel prices from Punjab's pumps to Canada's truck stops.
Source: Reuters
Background: a war in its ninth month, a June deal that collapsed, and a strait at the centre of it
The war began on February 28, 2026, when the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran. A ceasefire that took effect in April and a memorandum of understanding signed in June collapsed within weeks, and no ceasefire has been in force since; the US naval blockade of Iranian ports has continued, and Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world's oil and gas flowed in peacetime. On Monday, US officials said American forces carried out limited, defensive strikes on Qeshm Island after Iranian forces fired surface-to-air missiles at US assets — strikes Trump confirmed on Tuesday. All of it is landing on the day Americans vote in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, with the war's cost — put at at least $47 billion (yaani about 4,700 crore dollars) by the Associated Press — and high gasoline prices weighing on voters, and with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reported to be pressing for another wave of strikes once the voting is over.
Why it matters for Punjabi and Indian workers in the Gulf
Lakhs of Punjabi and Indian workers live and work in the Gulf states that ring the strait — Qatar itself, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, three of which now feature in this story as mediator and reported approvers of the draft. For them, whether this memorandum becomes a real interim deal decides practical things: whether Hormuz shipping — and the construction, logistics, hospitality and transport jobs tied to it — steadies or shuts again, whether flights home stay open, whether remittances keep flowing, and whether fuel prices back home in Punjab keep climbing. A simultaneous-announcement deal, if it comes, would be the first concrete step down from a war that has hung over every Gulf worksite since February.
Monday's strikes that preceded the draft's reported approval were on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz — confirmed by Trump himself as a “minor attack”. Read the Qeshm Island strikes report
Discussions are under way on arrangements for both sides to announce the agreement simultaneously, the mediation sources said — Tehran's nuclear concession and Washington's asset release in the same breath. Watch for: an on-record confirmation or denial from Washington or Tehran; Iran's formal written response to the draft; the US midterm results on Tuesday night and any post-election strike decision from Trump, who has kept the Pickaxe option openly on the table; and shipping movement in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran says reopens only when its conditions are met.