On 27th January 2022, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani held talks with his counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran. The meeting comes days before the Qatari emir is due to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington, DC. During the meeting, the two leaders discussed Afghanistan and Yemen. According to the foreign ministries of both the countries, the leaders spoke to each other on a phone call where discussion on bilateral as well as regional issues took place. The Qatari foreign minister also had spoken with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken a day before the meeting. Qatar is a close partner of the US and has a military base in Qatar.
Amirabdollahian after the meeting stated that “If we get to a stage where reaching a good deal with strong guarantees necessitates direct talks with the US, we will consider it.” Further, Iran’s security chief Ali Shamkhani stated in a tweet that contact with the American delegation in Vienna has so far been through informal written exchanges and there is no need for more.
Qatar’s meeting with the leaders of both the countries is being seen as a way to restore the decorating relations between the US and Iran over the nuclear deal issue as well as to settle the other regional issues. The representatives from the west have already been warning about the lack of time to rescue the nuclear deal which the US had abandoned in 2018. According to various articles, Iran has increased the level of its nuclear programme over the last few years but Tehran has denied the same for a long time and time and again declared that its nuclear programme has been only for peaceful purposes.
