Mediators scramble to avert US-Iran fighting after Trump's midterm restraint fades

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WASHINGTON — Regional mediators are mounting a last-ditch effort to head off another round of fighting between Iran and the United States after next week’s midterm elections ease President Donald Trump’s political constraints to escalate the war. 

In a bid to revive talks, Qatari mediators on Sunday delivered a letter from Vice President JD Vance to Iranian Security Council chief Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, calling for a resumption of negotiations between the two sides. 

Vance led a US delegation in marathon, face-to-face negotiations with Iranian officials in Islamabad in April. More recent discussions involving US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, held on the sidelines of last month’s United Nations summit in New York, were conducted indirectly through Qatari mediators. 

“They need help with medical supplies and various things,” Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked about the vice president's letter. “[Vance] asked me what I thought. I said if you want to do that, that’s okay. Basically, it’s getting supplies in to help people that are not well.”  

Trump’s response suggests the letter, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, included a US offer of humanitarian aid. Iran has billions of dollars in oil revenue held in foreign banks under US sanctions that the Trump administration could unfreeze for the purchase of food and medicine, as the Biden administration did under a 2023 prisoner exchange.  

An Iranian official told Al-Monitor the letter contained “few incentives” to avoid war, however, and was viewed internally as an effort by Vance to bolster his antiwar credentials should he run for president in 2028. 

“These are their last attempts before the midterms,” the official said. 

Sasan Karimi, a former senior Iranian government official and a professor of Iranian studies at the University of Tehran, said Tehran is not interested in handing Trump a win before Tuesday’s election, where Republicans have faced voter frustrations over higher energy prices linked to the war. 

“The Iranian suspicion is that maybe Donald Trump will withdraw or breach a deal that is only useful for his election,” said Karimi, who said a “wide distance” remains between the two sides’ negotiating positions.

The outreach comes as Trump weighs resuming major combat operations. Hard-line Iranian officials have publicly warned that US strikes on Iran’s infrastructure could trigger retaliatory attacks on AI facilities, data centers and undersea communications cables running through the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, US military bases and embassies across the region are on high alert for potential attacks by Iran or its Houthi allies in Yemen. In addition to the ordered departure of non-emergency personnel at the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia last week, American embassies in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan are undergoing what a State Department official told Al-Monitor were “temporary changes” in their staffing levels. 

Regional pressure on Iran 

A flurry of diplomatic visits to Tehran in recent days suggests regional mediators are “trying to move the Iranians rather than Trump,” said Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group.

“There's maybe a degree of recognition that nobody in the region has much leverage over Trump; that he's going to decide what he's going to decide, but that there is potentially some scope in pressuring the Iranians to make some concessions to open up space for a deal,” Brew said. 

On Monday, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman joined Pakistani army chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin for talks in Tehran with Rezaei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. It was the first high-level meeting between the so-called Mecca Pact countries and Tehran since the Houthis resumed attacks on Saudi Arabia this summer.  

Qatar remains the primary mediator over a proposal that sources have described as a less ambitious version of the memorandum of understanding reached in June. It would pause Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States lifting its naval blockade on Iranian ports and potentially releasing some frozen Iranian funds. 

Unlike the June MoU, the Trump administration is this time seeking upfront nuclear concessions tied to Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and access for United Nations nuclear inspectors, according to Brew. 

“My understanding is that there might be some flexibility on the Iranian side regarding resuming inspections,” Brew said. “There are some within the mediators who seem to think that would be enough to assuage Trump.”

Iran barred the International Atomic Energy Agency from inspecting the country’s main nuclear sites of Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz after they were damaged in US airstrikes in June 2025. The IAEA also lacks access to the nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain, fueling concerns that the site Iran says is a centrifuge assembly plant could have other covert purposes, such as uranium enrichment.  

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Iranian official said the “possibility of an agreement seems too slim to be able to count on” in the near future due to “maximalist” US demands. He warned that potential Iranian retaliation to renewed US strikes would be “very harsh and surely not proportionate.”