US and Iran Hold First Talks in Months at UN, Raising Diplomatic Hopes
Iran and the US communicated through mediators at the UN General Assembly, the first such contacts since July, as hardliners in Tehran push back and oil prices hold near two-week lows.
The United States and Iran have made their first diplomatic contact in months, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner communicating through mediators on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
It was the first such exchange since an interim ceasefire agreement collapsed in July. Neither side has publicly altered its position.
US President Donald Trump described the contacts as productive. "Steve and Jared had a very productive meeting today with mediators of Iran," he said, adding that he sensed "a lot of momentum for them to make a deal." Earlier, in an address to the General Assembly, Trump said he had to decide whether to reach a deal with Iran or "annihilate" it. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was scheduled to speak to the gathering on Wednesday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Tehran had engaged with Washington through a Qatari mediator and conveyed conditions, including an end to the war on all fronts and a halt to what it called US acts of aggression. Some Iranian state media had reported that Araqchi and Witkoff met directly, but Iranian officials clarified that no face-to-face meeting took place. Araqchi did meet Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, one of the main mediators in earlier rounds.
The opening follows months of resumed fighting across the region after negotiations broke down in July. The two sides have exchanged fire repeatedly since, though Trump has held back from a full-scale resumption of US strikes after military commanders warned that munitions stocks were running low.
Hardliner backlash
The contacts have drawn criticism in Iranian media aligned with hardliners. A semi-official Tasnim news agency opinion piece, associated with the Revolutionary Guards, argued that Araqchi was wrong to engage with Witkoff and Kushner, calling it "a major gift to Trump" since Iran had already conveyed its terms.
Iranian sources said the delegation had been instructed by the Supreme National Security Council not to meet the Americans face-to-face. The council includes figures selected by Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader, who has not appeared in public since succeeding his father, who was killed on the war's first day. One Iranian journalist covering the visit said some hardliners regarded the trip to New York itself as an insult to the memory of the slain leader, Ali Khamenei.
Oil near two-week lows
The diplomatic opening helped keep oil prices near two-week lows, with Brent crude hovering around $100 a barrel. Prices had surged earlier in the month when Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis launched a major offensive threatening traffic through the Red Sea, an alternative Saudi export route.
The war, launched by Trump in February alongside Israel as "Operation Epic Fury", has lasted nearly seven months, killing thousands and disrupting global energy supplies while spreading to other countries, particularly Lebanon and more recently Yemen. Trump has repeated his assertion that the war could end around the time of November's US midterm elections, without explaining why.
An interim agreement signed by Trump and Pezeshkian in June would have delivered Iran's main demands — lifting financial sanctions and unfreezing assets — in return for talks on limiting its nuclear programme. It unravelled within weeks over shipping rules in the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas before the war. Iran wants to control the strait and collect fees from ships using it, which Washington rejects.
In the latest reported attack there, Britain's UKMTO maritime security agency said a cargo ship was hit by projectiles, causing two casualties among the crew. The crew was evacuated and the vessel was on fire and adrift.
Despite near-daily attacks, traffic through the strait has picked up in recent weeks. Oil producers pay shipping companies fees of as much as a quarter of a cargo's value to take the wartime risk of sailing through with transponders switched off, before transferring crude to other vessels on the far side. Exports from the United Arab Emirates have recovered to pre-war levels, and Saudi Arabia has sold 60 million barrels of Gulf oil for this month and next, to be delivered beyond the strait off the coast of Oman.
Still, an estimated third of Gulf oil is missing from global supplies. Shortages have hit refined products such as diesel especially hard, driving inflation, pushing up interest rates and hurting Trump's Republicans ahead of the elections.