Iran skips technical talks, says U.S. conditions were not met
Iran stayed out of Sunday’s technical talks, tying its absence to recent attacks and to whether Washington had honored a deal on unfrozen funds.
Iran stayed out of technical talks scheduled for Sunday after recent attacks on the country and after officials said conditions tied to a memorandum of understanding with the United States had not been met. Mehdi Fazaeili, who sits in the Office of Preservation and Publication of the Works of Iran’s Supreme Leader, said on state television that one issue was whether Iran had access to unfrozen funds.
Fazaeili made the dispute sound concrete, not procedural. “One of the reasons is checking if we have access to the unfrozen funds,” he said, adding that if the money was not available, the condition had not been satisfied. The absence underscored how quickly the narrow diplomatic opening around Iran and the United States can narrow again when attacks and implementation disputes collide.
A senior U.S. official said nothing had been canceled, signaling that Washington was describing the talks differently even as Tehran stayed away. That split captures the shrinking space for diplomacy: Iran cast the move as a response to unmet commitments, while the United States kept the door open for follow-on discussions.
The standoff comes after a rapid sequence of claims and counterclaims over Iranian assets. On June 23, Mohammad Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, said an agreement had been reached with the United States to release $12 billion in frozen Iranian assets. The same day, Donald Trump said those funds would be used to buy U.S. produce, while Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Iran alone would decide how any unfrozen assets were used.
Those competing versions mattered because the dispute over money is bound up with a broader effort to slow escalation in the Iran-U.S. confrontation and reduce the risk around the Strait of Hormuz. Reuters also reported that the United States waived sanctions on Iran for 60 days from Monday after talks in Switzerland aimed at turning an interim deal into a lasting peace agreement, giving the current fight over implementation a hard financial and diplomatic backdrop.
The technical talks had been expected to continue in Doha later in the week. Instead, Iran’s absence turned them into another test of leverage, with Tehran signaling that it wants pressure on Washington to remain high until it sees the commitments it says were promised.
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