Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian in Moscow on Tuesday, and Qatar used the day to deliver a public message to Tehran: the next move belongs to Iran. Stop threatening the countries of the region and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and do it as proof of good faith, so the work of mediation can go towards a safe and prosperous region.
The words were spoken in Doha by Ibrahim bin Sultan Al Hashmi, director of the Media and Communications Department at Qatar's foreign ministry, at the ministry's weekly press briefing on Tuesday. "The ball is now in Iran's court to commit to these principles and demonstrate good faith," he said. "We have heard positive statements from the Iranian side… but they still need to demonstrate good faith, stop threatening countries of the region, and reopen the Strait of Hormuz so that all those efforts can go towards having a safe and prosperous region." Al Hashmi said the region needed a new security framework built on respect for national sovereignty and mutual non-aggression, a position Qatar had previously set out at the United Nations. Proposals were still being exchanged between the United States and Iran through the mediators, he said, and the crisis should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. No breakthrough was announced.
The meeting in Moscow took place on the sidelines of the eighth summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, whose member states hold around 70 percent of the world's proven natural gas reserves. Pezeshkian had arrived in the Russian capital on Monday night. The emir's office said the two leaders reviewed developments in the regional situation, "foremost among them the latest on the negotiations, the Strait of Hormuz, and energy supplies." Iran's state television gave a narrower account, saying the two reviewed the current state of relations between Tehran and Doha and emphasised deepening political and economic ties and making use of existing potential to strengthen bilateral cooperation. Tehran's official account made no mention of the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held his own separate meetings with both men on Tuesday. With the emir, Putin praised Qatar's mediation work in a number of crises, including the conflict between the United States and Iran, and said stability on world energy markets depended on coordination between Russia and Qatar, two of the largest gas exporters. Tamim said the Middle East was going through a difficult period and that the American-Iranian conflict had hurt the whole region. "We rely on Russia to resolve the crisis of the Hormuz Strait and alleviate the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip," the emir said. With Pezeshkian, Putin said the situation in the region was "a cause for concern, not only for us, but especially for us, given that we work closely with Iran. We are neighbours, we share many common interests, and we are striving to pursue them all. We hope that the situation will develop in a positive direction." The two also recorded growing trade, up 10.4 percent in the first eight months of the year, and continuing construction at the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Pezeshkian thanked Russia for its political, security and economic support and said countries in the region had the ability and the determination to resolve their challenges through regional cooperation without depending on the United States. Leaving Moscow, he called the visit "very positive and effective," saying understandings had been reached on agriculture, the oil and gas industries, road construction, security matters and bilateral cooperation. In his address to the summit, he condemned American military action and blockades against Iran — measures he described as economic terrorism — and warned that United States aggression in the Persian Gulf was putting global energy security and economic growth at risk.
The Moscow meetings capped three days of running diplomacy. A Qatari delegation was in Tehran on Sunday, where, according to Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, it reviewed developments in the regional situation, foremost among them the latest on the negotiations, the Strait of Hormuz and energy supplies. On Monday, Saudi Arabia's defence minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan's army chief General Asim Munir and Türkiye's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin held talks in Tehran aimed at stopping the war from reigniting; Iran described those talks as "very good," and the four sides agreed to keep talking. Qatar and Pakistan are the two countries at the front of the mediation between Washington and Tehran. Iran has already put its own terms on the table through those channels: on September 22, Tehran proposed ending the war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, provided the United States accepted Iran's conditions. A reported phased proposal, under which the strait would reopen in exchange for the United States lifting its naval blockade, has been reported stalled over sequencing and a first nuclear concession.
Tehran gave no direct public answer to Qatar's good-faith call on Tuesday. Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, in a statement published on his website the same day, described the present state of affairs as "neither war nor peace" and said ending the war required securing the conditions set by Iran's officials and safeguarding the rights of Iran and of what he called the regional resistance front. The warnings around the diplomacy remain live on every side: the United States, Iran and Israel have all said fighting could resume, President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States may strike Iran again, and Iranian security officials have told reporters that Tehran has drawn up plans to attack undersea cables in the Gulf if the United States and Israel attack again.
What Qatar is asking Iran to reopen is the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that carried close to a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas before the war. The strait is now effectively blockaded. Analyses cited in recent reporting estimate that about six million barrels a day are still moving through a nighttime transport route, roughly 40 percent or more of prewar flows, and October has been the worst month for reported attacks on commercial shipping since the first weeks of the war in March, according to the United Kingdom's maritime trade operations body. Brent crude rose above 117 dollars a barrel last week, its highest since April, after a wave of Iranian attacks on tankers around the strait, and prices eased only slightly on Tuesday as traders weighed the new diplomatic movement.
For ordinary people, this is a story about the price of filling a tank and heating a home. A fifth of the world's oil used to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and every week it stays shut or dangerous, the cost travels outward — into petrol and diesel prices in the United States and everywhere else, into shipping and insurance bills that land in the price of food and goods, and into the budgets of families who have no say in the matter. It is also about the Americans stationed across the Gulf, in countries Iran has already struck once during this war, including Qatar itself: whether the fighting restarts depends in part on whether Tehran takes the step Doha named on Tuesday. A reopened strait and an end to threats against neighbours would not settle the war on their own, but they are the two concrete moves that would lower prices, calm the region and show that the talking is working.
What happens next is not yet known. Whether Iran will answer Qatar's message with steps on the ground, whether the mediators' exchanged proposals can be turned into an agreement, and whether the warnings of new strikes stay warnings — none of that had been settled by Tuesday night. What is settled is the shape of the demand now sitting in Tehran: Qatar has said, in public and on the record, exactly what it wants Iran to do, and it has said the ball is in Iran's court.
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