Qatar said Wednesday that separate indirect meetings in Doha between US and Iranian negotiators made “positive progress” on issues tied to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, with both sides agreeing to continue discussions.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said in a post on X that Qatari and Pakistani mediators held separate talks with the US and Iranian delegations in Qatar’s capital.

He said the discussions built on the outcome of a high-level meeting in Switzerland and that the next meeting would be scheduled “at the earliest possible time” after funeral processions for Iran’s former supreme leader.

Iranian authorities are planning funeral ceremonies for the slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, from July 4 through July 9 in locations across Iran and Iraq, months after his death. He was killed in an airstrike on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran on February 28.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance said talks in Doha are “going well” and that discussions about the nuclear issue would start soon.

“It’s still pretty early, but talks are going well,” he told CNN on Wednesday after remarks to US service members in Virginia.

“Well, right now, the technical negotiators are sitting down with the Iranians, with the Qataris, and with others in Doha, you know, talking, talking about some of the details here,” he said. “We’re worried about the nuclear issue, we’re going to start talking about that, so right now the talks are going well.”

Speaking at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Vance thanked the US military, saying ongoing negotiations with Iran have been able to proceed, “not out of weakness” but “out of strength.”

And he cast the US war with Iran as fundamentally different from the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where he served as a Marine during a 2005 deployment, arguing that any military orders from President Donald Trump would come with clear objectives.

“[Trump’s] negotiating from a position where Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed and their conventional military has been destroyed too, and what I notice about the people who are attacking the administration for negotiating is that they’re the very same people who, for example, encouraged us to just go a little bit further and just drop a few more bombs in places like Afghanistan,” he said.

“Now, the president of the United States maintains a lot of options today in 2026, but if he ever asks you to go and drop bombs, it’s going to be for something specific.”

Source: CNN

– Agencies