Iran is now weighing a set of proposals put forward by mediators that could determine the fate of its nuclear program, a possible breakthrough in the deadlocked effort to end its war with the United States, The New York Times reports, citing five officials briefed on the talks.
The officials, among them an American and two Iranians, said Tehran’s readiness to take up the nuclear file again, after weeks of flatly refusing to do so, shows that Qatar’s mediation push to stop a slide back into all-out war has started to pay off. They described the terms on the table as “concrete proposals” but gave no further details. As of Thursday morning, two of the officials said, both Iran and the United States were going over the mediators’ latest ideas for closing the remaining gaps.
Qatar has led an intense round of diplomacy with Iran over the past week. It joined two rounds of talks in Tehran and hosted a third in Doha, and two of the officials said Qatari envoys have also met recently with Iranian officials in Armenia. According to three of the officials, Vice President JD Vance has become one of the strongest backers of the Qatari effort. Last month, Vance sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, proposing direct peace talks that would also cover the nuclear program. Rezaei said the letter showed that Washington had changed its tone, calling it a sign of the “Iranian nation’s strength and victory.”
On Monday, Vance said progress had been made with the Iranians while noting that President Trump has both “kinetic” and “non-kinetic” options. “The president and I both feel pretty good about the prospects for potentially coming to a negotiated settlement,” he said. At the same time, President Trump and Israel have been weighing a large-scale attack, and the two militaries have drawn up a list of targets that includes Iran’s energy infrastructure and other sites vital to its economy.
In public, Rezaei said in a televised speech on Saturday that Iran would not negotiate over its nuclear program until the United States meets its demands: releasing frozen Iranian assets, lifting sanctions on Iranian oil, and ending the American naval blockade of Iran’s ports. In private, however, the two Iranian officials and the American official said Rezaei has been more open to discussing the nuclear issue. He has been negotiating with the Qataris together with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
The biggest obstacle remains Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which President Trump has demanded Tehran give up entirely and has called “nuclear dust.” Iranian officials insist the material will not leave the country, and in earlier rounds Iran discussed diluting it on its own soil under international inspection. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimated in a report this year that, as of June 2025, Iran held about 440 kilograms, or roughly 970 pounds, of highly enriched uranium, which experts say could be enough for a small number of bombs.
Iranian leaders have warned that their forces would widen their range of targets if Iran is attacked again, and senior officials and clerics are debating whether to pull out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Gulf states fear another round could bring devastating retaliation on their own territory. “From the perspective of the U.A.E., and I would also say Gulf countries, we don’t really want to see another round of confrontation in the region,” Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said at the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain over the weekend. “We want to see a diplomatic and political resolution of this protracted crisis.”
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