Iran Sends Khamenei Message to Putin and Offers New Proposal via Qatar as Trump Says US Is 'Locked and Loaded'

Since Trump began threatening a full-scale return to bombardment after the midterms, the Iran file has split into two tracks. One is military. The other is a scramble of diplomacy that now runs through Moscow and Doha.

Rezaei in the Kremlin

Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, met Putin in Moscow on Thursday, Nov. 5. He carried a message from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Iranian state media did not say what the message contained. Rezaei called it "an extremely important exchange," according to remarks released by the Iranian embassy, and offered nothing more.

What he did say publicly was blunt. "On the issue of diplomacy, we have announced seven conditions to the Americans," Rezaei said. "As long as they do not execute our seven conditions, we will neither open the Strait of Hormuz nor have negotiations."

The conditions include lifting sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets, ending the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in and around Hormuz, and paying war reparations.

The Financial Times, citing a Russian defense manufacturer's 2024 and 2025 production schedule that it examined, reported that Russia agreed to supply Iran with 90 helicopter-mounted launchers for precision-guided missiles. The schedule assigns the order a code Russian defense documents use for Iran. Neither government has commented on that report in the material we have.

A proposal through Qatar

On Thursday, Iran also passed a new nuclear and peace proposal to the U.S. through Qatari mediators, a senior Iranian official told Reuters. Under Tehran's terms, it gets discussed only after Washington meets the seven demands. The U.S. is examining it, Reuters reported.

Washington's position runs the other way. The U.S. insists a deal on Iran's nuclear capacity must be part of any ceasefire before wider peace talks can restart.

That is a sequencing fight. Iran wants concessions first and talks second. The U.S. wants nuclear terms on the table at the start.

Trump: 'Locked and loaded'

Asked in the Oval Office on Thursday about the Iranian proposal, Trump dismissed its relevance. "It doesn't make any difference what they're looking at," he said. "They're not going to have a nuclear weapon; they know that. So do I."

He said a decision on going further is coming. "In Iran we are there for seven months, and we control everything that we've wanted to control, and now we'll make a decision: do we want to go further," Trump said.

He added: "I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I'll have to; you'll know soon enough." He also said he believes it would take Iran 25 years to rebuild. "We're locked and loaded," he told reporters.

Axios quoted a U.S. official saying U.S. Central Command is preparing for a resumption of major operations and is waiting on orders from Washington. That is a single anonymous account. The White House has not announced an order.

Escalation around the edges

Iran says it shot down two U.S. reconnaissance drones near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. struck the area earlier this week. Iran says it will retaliate if Washington resumes larger strikes.

The fighting is also spreading beyond the Gulf. The Saudi-led coalition said Friday, Nov. 6, that its air defenses intercepted two ballistic missiles the Houthis fired toward Najran, a major Saudi city. The coalition said debris fell and that a damage assessment is underway.

Russia's other negotiating table

Moscow is juggling more than one file. Trump met Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev at the White House on Thursday. He said afterward that he expects a major agreement with Russia that could extend beyond Ukraine and potentially involve Europe as a whole, according to NATO-relayed accounts of the meeting.

U.S.-mediated talks among Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are scheduled for Nov. 10-11 in Abu Dhabi. Europe will not be at the table. The Kremlin's Yuri Ushakov said Europeans could come to Abu Dhabi if they bought tickets but that no one intended to invite them.

That puts Putin in an unusual position this week. He received Tehran's top security official while Washington's envoy was in the Oval Office. No source has said the two meetings are linked.

What comes next

Trump has not given a date for his decision. The Iranian proposal is under U.S. review, and Tehran says it will not negotiate or reopen Hormuz until its seven demands are met. The next fixed date on the calendar is Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10, where the topic is Ukraine, not Iran.