Iranian negotiators held talks in Doha on Saturday with Qatari mediators over ways out of the war in the Gulf, as diplomats try to avert a fresh outbreak of fighting once the United States midterm elections are over.
Saturday’s meeting in the Qatari capital followed more than 12 hours of discussions on Friday between Iranian and Qatari envoys in Tehran, according to a source briefed on the negotiations who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. The source said the talks were being coordinated in regular contacts with Washington.
Countries across the region have been anticipating that US President Donald Trump, who has held off striking Iran in the weeks before Tuesday’s midterms, could restart attacks once voting is over. Iran has repeatedly said it would answer any new attacks by striking at US and Israeli targets in neighbouring countries.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a statement on Saturday ordering the armed forces to be prepared to respond to any attack. The Iranian military later announced it was taking steps to improve its readiness. Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since replacing his father, who was killed at the war’s outset, said senior commanders had reported high readiness along the Gulf coast, in and around the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman, and on Iran’s north-western and south-eastern borders.
“Any level or type of threat must be met with an immediate, impactful, and geographically unrestricted response,” Khamenei said in the statement, posted on his official Telegram account.
Trump, who launched the war alongside Israel in February, has repeatedly hinted at plans to restart strikes. Last week he urged Israelis ahead of their own election to keep his wartime ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in power so the two leaders can “finish the job”.
Washington has also lately signalled openness to diplomacy. Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation at previous rounds of talks with Iran, wrote a letter to a hardline senior Iranian security official, which the New York Times and Wall Street Journal described as an initiative to test whether talks could be restarted. Trump played the letter down, saying he approved it only to discuss letting more medical supplies into Iran.
In the latest Qatari-mediated discussions, the Qataris brought a proposal to Tehran a week ago for a seven-day plan, under which the US and Iran would take daily steps to build trust ahead of broader peace talks, the source briefed on the negotiations said. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Friday that this proposal was not deemed satisfactory by Tehran.
Iran has been proposing its own seven-day plan since September, so far rejected by Trump. That plan calls for Washington to lift a blockade of Iranian ports, unfreeze assets and approve an Iranian-backed route through the Strait of Hormuz, after which the contested strait would be reopened. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in remarks reported by Al Jazeera on Saturday that Iran was studying Vance’s letter, and that the Iranian plan was the only proposal on the table to reopen the strait.
The details of the Doha and Tehran talks rest on a single anonymous source briefed on the negotiations, and neither Washington nor Tehran has publicly confirmed the contents of the discussions, so the precise state of the diplomacy remains unverified.
Sources: Reuters, “Iranian envoys meet Qatari mediators as threat looms of US strikes after midterms” (31 October 2026), https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-envoys-meet-qatari-mediators-threat-looms-us-strikes-after-midterms-2026-10-31/
