Iran and U.S. Held Secret Talks on Proxy Attacks and Cease-Fire

NY Times-March 15th2024

Iran and the United States held secret, indirect talks in Oman in January, addressing the escalating threat posed to Red Sea shipping by the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the attacks on American bases by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, according to Iranian and U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

The secret talks were held on Jan. 10 in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with Omani officials shuffling messages back and forth between delegations of Iranians and Americans sitting in separate rooms. The delegations were led by Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, and Brett McGurk, President Biden’s coordinator for the Middle East.

The meeting, first reported by The Financial Times this week, was the first time Iranian and American officials had held in-person negotiations — albeit indirectly — in nearly eight months. American officials said Iran requested the meeting in January and the Omanis strongly recommended that the United States accept.

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the United States and Iran have reassured each other that neither was seeking a direct confrontation, a stance conveyed in messages they passed through intermediaries.

But in Oman, each side had a clear request of the other, according to U.S. and Iranian officials.

Washington wanted Iran to rein in its proxies to stop the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the targeting of American bases in Iraq and Syria. Tehran, in turn, wanted the Biden administration to deliver a cease-fire in Gaza.

No agreement was reached, however, and within hours after Mr. McGurk left the meeting with the Iranians, the United States led military strikes on Jan. 11 on multiple Houthi targets in Yemen. In early February, the United States launched strikes on Iranian-linked military bases in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the killing of three American service members in an attack by Iraqi militia close to Iran.

Attacks on U.S. bases have since ended in Iraq, and there have been reports of only a few such attacks in Syria.

A senior American official said that the United States had engaged in the talks to show that even as tensions spiked, Washington was still open to pursuing diplomacy with Iran — but that thedialogue did not produce results, the United States would use force.

Two Iranian officials, one with the foreign ministry, said that Iran had maintained in the talks that it did not control the activity of the militia, particularly the Houthis, but that it could use its influence on them to ensure that all attacks would come to a halt if a cease-fire were reached in Gaza — but not before.

Iran and the United States have continued trading messages regularly about the proxy militias and a cease-fire since they met in January, with the Omanis as intermediaries, American and Iranian officials said.