In a letter to Iran’s national security chief Mohsen Rezaei, US Vice President JD Vance stressed that negotiations to halt any potential US strikes would "require discussions on the nuclear issue,” Axios reported on Wednesday, citing a US official.
According to Vance, the letter, which US President Donald Trump was “enthusiastic about,” focused on restarting ceasefire negotiations between the US and Iran. Sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that Vance’s letter focused on a possible negotiation framework rather than peace proposals.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the matter, though it is unknown when Vance sent the letter.
Axios reported that it is the most senior-level outreach from Washington to Tehran in several months, and comes as Trump considers resuming strikes on Iran following the upcoming US midterm elections.
Rezaei is the secretary of Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, and was previously Iran’s longest-serving commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Axios reported that he has a direct line to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
He emerged as an influential, hawkish figure who advocated military operations against the United Arab Emirates, as well as against data centers and other vital infrastructure across the region, the WSJ reported.
Rezaei has said that Iran was not open to negotiations with the US unless the regime’s demands were met.
A spokesman for the vice president’s office declined to discuss the matter with the WSJ after the White House referred a request for comment to Vance’s team.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said he was not informed of the Vance’s letter, and Rezaei could not be reached for comment, the WSJ reported.
Will Iran take the latest iteration of the Qatari deal?
Notably, on Tuesday, Rezaei met with Khamenei after holding talks with representatives of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan in the first high-level contact between Iran and the three nations.
Qatari mediators presented Iran with a new draft deal on Sunday to end the war with the US and Israel, and Tehran is expected to send a response to the draft by the end of the week, an official briefed on the negotiations said on Wednesday.
The new draft Iran is considering sets a seven-day timeline that addresses both Tehran's and Washington's concerns and lays out daily confidence-building steps each side must take, the official said.
The timeline could begin early next week, and several countries would act as guarantors of the deal, the official added.
CENTCOM denies Iranian claims of commercial vessels hitting sea mines in Hormuz
Efforts to revisit ceasefire negotiations come as US Central Command (CENTCOM) denies reports from Iranian media that commercial vessels are hitting sea mines while transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.
In a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday, CENTCOM said that “all internationally recognized primary transit routes through the Strait of Hormuz have been cleared of sea mines by US forces and remain so.”
“Thousands of commercial vessels have safely used the transit lanes and continue today,” it concluded.