U.S. and Iranian Negotiators Make Positive Progress in Qatar Talks.

U.S. and Iranian negotiators met separately on Wednesday with Qatari and Pakistani mediators, made positive progress and agreed to continue discussions, host Qatar said. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, were in Qatar for talks aimed at securing a permanent end to the war, along with Iran’s top negotiator, Kazem Gharibabadi.

The next meeting will be scheduled "at the earliest possible time" after the funeral of Iran’s previous supreme leader, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, said on X. The funeral is set to begin on Saturday in Tehran.

In peacetime, a fifth of all global oil and natural gas shipments passed through the channel. Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28, Iran has consistently used its ability to choke off the vital waterway as a key source of geopolitical leverage, severely disrupting global markets for energy and other critical goods. Iran and the United States agreed as part of an interim deal to allow ships to pass without paying charges for 60 days. But Tehran insisted it must control the routes of the vessels and later charge fees for passage, upending decades of practice in the waterway.

The difficulty of the negotiations was highlighted on Wednesday when a vessel ran aground in the strait while using what Tehran described as an unapproved route, Iranian state television reported. The vessel was identified only as a foreign container ship, with no further details provided. The broadcast appeared aimed at underlining Tehran’s persistent claims to territorial control over the strategic strait, which the international community has long considered an international waterway.