Foreign & Public Diplomacy

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Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S.-Iran negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, rising anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, and what the next 10 years of Labour rule might look like for the United Kingdom.

U.S. and Iranian officials are preparing to hold indirect talks in Qatar on Tuesday and Wednesday following days of tit-for-tat strikes that threatened to unravel the two sides’ precarious cease-fire. Rather than focus on Iran’s nuclear program, though—as was supposed to be the priority of this week’s negotiations—the parties plan to discuss ongoing security concerns in the Strait of Hormuz.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.S.-Iran negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, rising anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa, and what the next 10 years of Labour rule might look like for the United Kingdom.

U.S. and Iranian officials are preparing to hold indirect talks in Qatar on Tuesday and Wednesday following days of tit-for-tat strikes that threatened to unravel the two sides’ precarious cease-fire. Rather than focus on Iran’s nuclear program, though—as was supposed to be the priority of this week’s negotiations—the parties plan to discuss ongoing security concerns in the Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier this month, the United States and Iran signed a preliminary peace agreement that included a provision to reopen the strategic waterway. However, the deal’s vague wording, which states that Tehran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days,” has left room for interpretation and has fanned the flames of further conflict.

The latest result has been four straight days of reignited hostilities. On Thursday, an Iranian drone damaged a Singapore-flagged container ship off the coast of Oman. In response, U.S. forces launched retaliatory strikes targeting Iranian missile and drone storage sites as well as coastal radar facilities. Then, over the weekend, Iran attacked another vessel in the Strait of Hormuz and later claimed to have targeted U.S. military bases in Bahrain and Kuwait.

U.S. officials told Axios on Sunday that the two sides had agreed to halt their attacks. Still, this flare-up in violence appears to have dashed hopes that the critical thoroughfare could........

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