Pakistani sources suggest that the US and Iran will hold indirect talks, initially through mediators, and the nuclear subject will not be raised at this point, Anadolu reports

Reports of indirect US-Iran contact, sourced to a single intermediary country and carried by a state-affiliated wire, sit at the lowest tier of reliability in this long-running file: over the years similar unattributed signals have surfaced and dissolved repeatedly, and the established sequence is a brief crude risk-premium unwind followed by a retrace once neither capital confirms. The detail that the nuclear file is explicitly excluded limits the read-through materially, since it is the nuclear track, through its linkage to sanctions relief and Iranian export volumes, that carries the durable supply implications for WTI and Brent; talks about talks on peripheral subjects historically change nothing at the margin for physical flows. The channel to watch is therefore freight, options skew and the prompt spread rather than flat price, where headline-driven de-escalation bids have tended to be shallow and short-lived absent a named framework or date. Pakistan's role as messenger fits the familiar pattern of third-party facilitation, but the onus falls on confirmation from Washington or Tehran, neither of which has a record of endorsing such reports quickly. Worth watching next: any acknowledgement from either side, movement in Iranian crude loadings and shadow-fleet activity, and whether the report is echoed by wires with a stronger track record on this beat.