Senior Iranian official says talks in Tehran with Mecca Pact members exclude the nuclear issue, reports suggest; Iran will not discuss its nuclear programme until the US meets Tehran's demands

Senior Iranian official says talks in Tehran with Mecca Pact members exclude the nuclear issue, reports suggest; Iran will not discuss its nuclear programme until the US meets Tehran's demands.

Negotiating formats that wall off the nuclear file from regional de-escalation talks are a recurring feature of Iran diplomacy, and past rounds have tended to stall at precisely this juncture: Tehran insisting on preconditions before engaging on the programme itself, counterparties insisting the nuclear issue is the agenda. The sequencing tell, in comparable episodes, is whether the regional track (Gulf-state or other mediated channels) keeps moving despite the nuclear impasse; when it has, crude risk premia have bled out gradually, when it has collapsed the premium has returned through freight, insurance and the front of the curve rather than the back. The actors here have form: Tehran has historically used preconditions as a holding tactic to preserve leverage while sanctions pressure builds, and the demand-first framing fits that pattern rather than signalling a walkaway. For WTI, the established pattern is that headlines of this kind move the curve modestly unless they carry a concrete change in export flows, sanctions enforcement or tanker traffic; status-quo rhetoric reprices little. What bears watching is the counterparty response, any movement on the stated US demands, and whether the regional track survives the nuclear exclusion.