DOHA – Iran’s delegation in Doha held a series of talks with Qatari and Pakistani officials on Wednesday to review the implementation of last month’s memorandum of understanding with the United States, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said, as both sides remain publicly at odds over who has violated the agreement first.
Gharibabadi described the day’s schedule in a statement: the Iranian team began with a bilateral meeting with Qatar’s foreign minister, after which delegations from Iran, Qatar and Pakistan held two trilateral sessions. The first meeting of a monitoring group established to oversee the deal’s implementation also took place, and it was inside that forum that Tehran lodged its primary complaint.
According to the deputy minister, Iran used the monitoring group session to formally address what it called Washington’s breach of the first point of the memorandum, which concerns the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon. Iran has maintained since the deal was signed on June 17 that the agreement requires an immediate halt to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. The United States and Israel have both disputed that reading. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the signing that Israel was not bound by the arrangement and would preserve its freedom of action against Hezbollah, a position publicly backed at the time by the Trump administration.
Tehran also raised the buildup of American logistical capabilities and forces in the Middle East as a separate violation of the memorandum, Gharibabadi said, without providing specific detail about the locations or scale of deployment it considered problematic.
On the financial question, Gharibabadi said the meetings with Qatari officials, including central bank representatives, addressed the release of a portion of Iran’s frozen funds held in Qatar. Iran says the memorandum provides for access to $6 billion of those assets, to be used for purchases of goods. “Based on our country’s stated needs, the necessary goods would be purchased and supplied to Iran,” Gharibabadi said, according to the statement. The Qatari foreign ministry has said the funds have not been transferred and that any disbursement will occur in accordance with the progress of negotiations.
The Doha sessions were held indirectly, with no direct meetings between Iranian and American officials taking place, Gharibabadi confirmed after the talks concluded. All contact between the two delegations went through Qatari and Pakistani mediators. US Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the American technical team “is sitting down with the Iranians, with the Qataris, and with others in Doha,” adding that “talks are going well” while acknowledging it was “still pretty early.” US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had met separately with Qatar’s prime minister on Tuesday to lay the groundwork for the technical sessions, and Qatar’s foreign ministry said no high-level US-Iran encounter was scheduled.
An expert tracking the negotiations said the gap is less about the nuclear file than about the deal’s own terms. “Right now, we’ve seen the agreement hung up in its own clauses and the implementation commitments of each side,” Sina Toossi, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for International Policy, told CNN. “It seems to be over the commitments of the MoU, namely the Lebanon and Hormuz issue.”
The Strait of Hormuz remains the most operationally sensitive dispute. Iran has asserted joint sovereignty over the waterway alongside Oman and has indicated it intends to administer the strait and collect passage fees when the memorandum’s 60-day ceasefire extension expires. Washington’s position is that the strait is an international waterway and that any new arrangements require endorsement from Gulf states. That disagreement formed the backdrop for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s meetings with counterparts from six Gulf countries in Bahrain last week. Iranian drone attacks on commercial vessels in the strait in recent days have added urgency to the impasse, with both governments accusing the other of triggering the incidents.
The memorandum, formally called the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, was signed remotely by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on June 17. Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles following the G7 summit; Pezeshkian signed in Tehran. The document establishes a 60-day extension of the ceasefire that first came into force on April 8, sets a timeline for lifting the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, and calls for Iran to restore shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. It does not resolve Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile capabilities, or the status of its network of non-state allies in the region, deferring those issues to negotiations during the ceasefire window. Tehran’s weekend strikes on US military installations, before Wednesday’s talks were scheduled, had rattled markets and renewed questions about the deal’s durability.
Gharibabadi announced that working groups have been formed to follow up on implementation and to eventually negotiate a final agreement, though formal talks in that structure have not yet begun. He told reporters after Wednesday’s sessions that consultations are continuing to determine the time and place for the start of negotiations through mediators, and that those talks would begin “if the necessary conditions are met.” He did not specify what conditions Iran considers unmet.
Trump, asked about the day’s meetings, called them “very good.”
