By Michael Martina and Elwely Elwelly
A woman holds an Iranian flag near an anti-U.S. billboard depicting U.S. President Donald Trump and the Strait of Hormuz, in Tehran
NEW DELHI/DUBAI, May 25 (Reuters) - Iran's top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar's prime minister on a potential deal with the U.S. to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said on Monday, after Washington and Tehran played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New Delhi earlier that the U.S. would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before considering whether to deal with Iran in "another way".
There was a "pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait, get the strait (of Hormuz) open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off," Rubio said.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said talks with Iran were going "nicely", but warned of fresh attacks if they failed. It "will only be a Great Deal for all, or no Deal at all," he wrote.
In his post, he urged more Arab and Muslim states to sign up to the Abraham Accords, which were brokered during Trump's first term in office and aim to normalise ties between Arab and other Muslim-majority states and Israel.
He said Saudi Arabia and Qatar should immediately sign up and everyone else should follow suit, calling his request mandatory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's post.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in a weekly briefing on Monday that a conclusion had been reached on many topics, but that does not mean that "we're close to signing an agreement."
The official briefed on the Iranians' Doha visit told Reuters the discussions were focused primarily on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, while the country's central bank governor is also part of the delegation to discuss the potential release of frozen Iranian funds as part of a final deal.
Baghaei said the potential memorandum of understanding contains 14 points and is focused on ending the war and the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, in exchange for Iran taking steps to ensure safe transit through the strategic waterway.
He said the talks were not yet focusing on nuclear issues, however, which will be negotiated over a 60-day period if the framework accord is agreed.
Trump has said his key aim in the war is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon with its highly enriched uranium. Tehran has consistently denied it has any plans to do that.
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As efforts to reach a deal continued, Iran said it had downed a "hostile" stealth drone using a new air defence system, Iranian news agencies reported, without saying where it had come from.
"This is a sign from us that no more stealth drones can penetrate the skies of the Persian Gulf," Fars quoted unnamed officials as saying.
STICKING POINTS
Baghaei said the potential accord contained no specific details on management of the strait, through which about a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied gas usually flows.
Iran will not charge tolls for ships to pass through, Baghaei said. However, he added there would be a cost for services offered such as navigation and steps to protect the environment, under a protocol to be agreed with Oman, which shares the opposite shore of the waterway.
The strait has been effectively closed since the U.S. and Israel first launched strikes on Iran on February 28, with only a handful of vessels passing through compared with about 125 to 140 daily before the conflict.
Iran's state TV said on Monday that 32 vessels and five oil tankers passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours with the authorisation of Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces, and it reiterated that no vessel would be allowed to transit without coordination with the IRGC.
The energy crisis due to the Hormuz standoff has caused a spike in oil prices and driven up the costs of fuel, fertiliser and food.
Oil prices fell more than 4% to two-week lows on Monday on optimism that the U.S. and Iran might be moving closer to a deal.
The two sides remain at odds on several difficult issues, however, such as Iran's nuclear ambitions, Israel's war in Lebanon with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia and Tehran's demands for the lifting of sanctions and the release of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenues frozen in foreign banks.
TENUOUS CEASEFIRE
Trump, whose approval ratings have been hit by the war's impact on U.S. energy prices, and who has faced congressional efforts to curb his war powers, has repeatedly played up the prospect of a deal to end the war.
Separately, two sources said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told his confidants that Israel now has little ability to influence Trump's decision-making over the Iran conflict.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Additional reporting by Akanksha Khushi, Doina Chiacu, Ariba Shahid, Hatem Mater, Andrew Mills, Elwely Elwelly, Michael Martina and Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Helen Coster, Stephen Coates, Sharon Singleton and Hugh Lawson; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Aidan Lewis and Toby Chopra)
