Tehran wants to move beyond 'no war, no peace', the ball is in America's court: Ghalibaf

As the United States-Iran war drags on and talks remain stalled, Tehran is determined to move beyond a state of 'no war and no peace', parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has told Al Jazeera, saying the ball is now in the American court.

Ghalibaf says Tehran remains open to a deal with the US to agree a ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and has been waiting for Washington to respond to its terms for this to happen.

Iran continues to assert control over which vessels may pass through the Strait of Hormuz, where attacks on tankers taking 'unauthorised' routes have disrupted shipping.

For now, full-scale fighting remains on hold, but a formal peace deal is still out of reach, in a fragile stalemate that experts say may not hold for long.

'The current equilibrium is inherently unstable,' Ali Vaez, deputy programme director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera. 'Because what Washington considers a sustainable stalemate, Tehran sees as a slow-motion strangulation. Both sides are banking on the other's pain threshold being lower than their own.'

Tehran has laid down seven conditions before it will agree to a ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, then restart peace talks through a Qatari mediator, and has been waiting for an official US response. They include the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iranian ports, sanctions relief, releasing frozen Iranian funds, ending hostilities on all fronts and formally declaring the war over.

Ghalibaf said these conditions had already formed part of the memorandum of understanding reached with the US in Islamabad in June, and must be implemented before Iran will re-enter negotiations with the US.

Experts say US President Donald Trump has for now chosen to ratchet up economic pressure. Washington has tightened sanctions, maintained its blockade on Iranian ports and announced an operation that Trump says will cut off overland routes Iran uses to transport advanced weapons and technology.

Qatar said on Tuesday it was 'working tirelessly' to resolve the crisis and that both sides had made positive statements about diplomacy. A day earlier, after hosting Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani at the White House, Trump said there was 'momentum towards the end of this conflict'. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, has described Iran's demands as 'unacceptable'.

Gerd Nonneman, a professor of international relations and Gulf studies at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the cost of keeping up this pressure could narrow Washington's room for manoeuvre, saying the status quo would never be a sustainable strategy because it is prohibitively expensive, both in overall economic effects and in the cost of the military operation.

Iran's leverage was on display last weekend, when shipping slowed sharply following attacks on tankers. Just five commodity vessels crossed on Saturday, November 7, while trade intelligence firm Kpler recorded none on Sunday, November 8, compared with 31 crossings over the previous weekend, Reuters reported, citing the firm's ship-tracking data.

In a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said a 'massive explosion' on Wednesday night brought two supertankers to a standstill as they travelled along a route it said was unauthorised; the vessels were carrying more than four million barrels of oil between them.

Trump's advisers are reportedly divided over what to do next, according to Axios. Rubio has argued the economic pressure campaign is working, while Vice President JD Vance has pushed for a negotiated deal. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner have backed maintaining economic pressure.

Albert Vidal, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the US is slightly keener than Iran on the current stalemate because of the economic pressure inflicted by the naval blockade. He said last week's midterm elections could also affect Trump's calculations, as Democrats could use the power of the purse in the new Congress in January to make it harder to sustain military operations, and he noted shortages of ballistic missile interceptors.

'The tragedy is that both sides know how to start another round of hostilities, but neither knows how to control or end it,' Vaez said. Analysts also noted Iran has signalled it may retaliate against civilian infrastructure as well as US military bases in the region.