Qatari and Pakistani mediators walked US and Iranian delegations through a day of indirect talks in Doha on Wednesday, and Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari called the outcome "positive progress."
The two sides never sat at the same table. Mediators shuttled between them on issues tied to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the agreement signed on 14 June that took effect four days later. The session built on last month's Lake Lucerne Summit in Switzerland, where technical negotiations opened on 21 June under the same joint track.
Direct talks are expected in Doha in the third week of July, according to Pakistani government sources. Washington is described as ready. Tehran gave a "positive" response and signaled it would resume after the funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli strike on 28 February.
That funeral now sets the calendar. Public rites begin Saturday at 6 a.m. local time (0300 GMT) at Tehran's Mosalla Mosque, with ceremonies running from 4 to 9 July across Tehran, Qom, Najaf, Karbala, and Mashhad. Burial follows on 9 July at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad. Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif travels to Iran on Friday.
The sticking points are sequencing and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran told mediators it will not fully reopen the strait until the "foremost" point of the memorandum is met: a ceasefire on all fronts and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon. Tehran added it will hold no nuclear talks until the Lebanon question and its frozen assets are "completely" settled.
Washington wants a different order. US negotiators argued that implementing settled issues and talking through pending ones should "go together," and that "already settled issues must not be overlapped by the pending ones." Iran disagreed with that framing.
On the money, there was movement. Iran wants the immediate release of $6 billion held in Qatar; the US agreed in principle but tied it to tranches keyed to implementation. The next round is set to focus on Lebanon and Hormuz, with no nuclear file on the agenda yet.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha on Wednesday. The emir said Qatar, with Pakistan, would keep backing negotiations toward a "comprehensive and sustainable" settlement, according to the Amiri Court. He also spoke by phone with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa about the talks and regional de-escalation, per Qatar's state news agency.
The diplomacy runs against a hard military backdrop. On Thursday, the Iranian army's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters warned through Fars News Agency that continued US manned and unmanned aircraft over Hormuz "has caused insecurity," and vowed a "swift and decisive" response to any US interference. Iran called the strait "the sovereign territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and its security a "red line." Tehran said every tanker and commercial vessel must use Iran's designated route, and that any violation would meet "an immediate and forceful response."
The warning came after a CENTCOM-hosted security meeting in Manama, Bahrain, that drew military officials from 11 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, and Yemen, to discuss safe passage through Hormuz.
Oil is starting to move again anyway. Four Bahri-owned supertankers loaded at Ras Tanura entered the Gulf of Oman on Thursday after passing through Hormuz, carrying roughly 8 million barrels of crude, per Bloomberg. That was the largest batch of Saudi supertanker exits since the truce took hold about two weeks earlier. Saudi Aramco even made rare spot sales of at least 6 million barrels to buyers in South Korea, Japan, and China.
The recovery is partial. Ships now cross in convoys, mostly through a US-administered corridor in Omani waters. Before the war, about 130 commercial vessels transited Hormuz. Traffic stopped after 28 February and still sits roughly 70 percent below pre-war levels.
Turkish logistics operators are watching the freight math. Bilgehan Engin, president of the Turkish Forwarding and Logistics Association (UTIKAD), described "not a sharp collapse but rather a gradual and fluctuating normalization" in spot rates. Insurance costs are falling faster than freight, he said, with risk premiums repriced lower rather than erased. Türkiye has opposed the strikes on Iran from the start and warned that a contested Hormuz puts the trade and energy routes its exporters depend on at risk. For Ankara, whether the truce survives Lebanon is not an abstract question.