Iran signals door to diplomacy is still open even as war grinds on

Even as fighting between the United States and Iran continues, Iran's leadership has signalled that it is not closing the door on diplomacy, while making clear how little trust it places in Washington.

Iran's chief negotiator, the parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, framed talks as part of the confrontation rather than an alternative to it. "Negotiation is a method of struggle," he said, according to reporting carried by regional outlets, adding that Iran was dealing with "a malicious enemy" rather than a friend. His comments underline a posture in which Tehran keeps a channel open while preparing for further conflict.

Mediators try to keep talks alive

Qatar and Pakistan have been acting as go-betweens. Mediators have shuttled between US and Iranian delegations in an effort to de-escalate and to keep alive a memorandum of understanding the two sides had reached, according to Al Jazeera. Iran has said it will not return to higher-level negotiations until the United States implements the terms of that agreement, which was meant to ease the confrontation and reopen shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Fighting has not stopped

The diplomatic signals come against a backdrop of continued violence. The United States reimposed its naval blockade of Iran's ports and carried out fresh strikes on Iranian military sites, as Al Jazeera reported, while Iran's Revolutionary Guard has struck at shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and at US bases in the Gulf. A ceasefire the two sides had signed weeks earlier has effectively collapsed, with each blaming the other.

An uncertain path

Washington's messaging has been mixed. US officials have said at various points that talks were "going well" even as President Trump declared the earlier ceasefire over, and the administration has spoken of pursuing regional deals. Against that uncertainty, the mediators' work continues.

For now, the picture is one of a war being fought and a negotiation being kept, barely, on life support at the same time. Whether the thin diplomatic thread survives is likely to depend on whether either side concludes it has more to gain from talking than from fighting, a calculation that, for the moment, neither appears ready to make.