US President Donald Trump said on Friday that his administration is holding talks with representatives of Iran.
Speaking to reporters, the US President added: “We are making very good progress with Iran,” according to the Reuters news agency.
Regional and international diplomatic movements intensified to contain tension between the United States and Iran and prevent the renewal of the military confrontation that threatens to expand the circle of war in the Middle East, while Washington and Tehran exchanged statements amid a struggle to impose conditions and power calculations.
Washington is talking about possible progress in the negotiations, while Tehran is preparing to consider a diplomatic solution. Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, said that US Vice President J.D. Vance’s message expresses a “change in tone,” and described it as a “good indicator,” but at the same time Tehran insists on the need for the United States to respond to its demands before returning to the dialogue table. This reflects the continuing gap between the two parties despite intensified mediation efforts.
Qatar emerges at this stage as the main mediator in communications between Washington and Tehran. A delegation of Qatari mediators visited the Iranian capital, Tehran, last Monday evening, to resume talks with Iranian officials regarding the possibility of reaching an agreement to end the conflict that has been ongoing for months.
This mediation gains special importance in light of the difficulty of resuming direct contacts between the two parties, and the requirement of each of them to make concrete concessions before entering into new negotiations.
In a development that may open a new window for the negotiating path, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran had sent the United States a proposal related to its nuclear program via Qatar, indicating that Washington is currently studying the proposal.
But the official clarified that discussion of the proposal will not begin until the United States responds to seven Iranian demands. This reflects Tehran’s commitment to linking the resumption of nuclear negotiations to the settlement of a group of political, economic and military issues.
Two high-ranking officials in the US Department of Justice resigned today, Friday, in an acceleration of the pace of resignations of senior officials in the department after the midterm elections that took place on Tuesday, in which President Donald Trump’s Republican colleagues lost control of Congress.
The resignations of John Eisenberg, who headed the National Security Division of the Department of Justice, and Jason Redding Quinones, who was pursuing investigations into previous criminal cases related to Trump, follow the resignation of the head of the Civil Rights Unit, Harmeet Dhillon, yesterday, Thursday.
The Department of Justice is now leaderless on two of its most prominent initiatives; The first is the initiative related to reviewing previous investigations, and the second targets higher education, according to Reuters.
It is not clear why Quinones or Eisenberg resigned. But it is not strange for senior American officials to leave the government following midterm elections, especially those that inflict major defeats on the ruling party. Democrats plan to conduct a series of investigations into Trump's administration and business dealings.
As U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Quinones was at the center of Trump's attempts to exploit the Justice Department to retaliate against his political opponents. His office was tasked with reviewing criminal investigations into Trump's handling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021, and his campaign's contacts with Russia in the 2016 election, among other issues.
The investigation, which officials called the “Great Conspiracy,” aimed to prove that the president was the victim of a long-running criminal conspiracy. But the investigation has struggled to bring any criminal charges so far, and the prosecutor overseeing the investigation, Joseph DiGenova, resigned in September.
Quinones' office in Miami also filed criminal charges against former Cuban President Raul Castro in a major escalation of the Trump administration's pressure campaign against Havana.
