When Iranian missiles and drones struck Qatar during the war, few expected Doha to emerge weeks later as one of the countries to help Washington and Tehran move towards a framework agreement.
Yet, Qatar appears to have played a behind-the-scenes role in the diplomacy that helped bridge gaps between the two sides, highlighting the Gulf state's position as a regional intermediary.
US and regional sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that Qatar maintained channels with Tehran, sending negotiators to Iran during the final phase of diplomacy, and helped build the understanding that culminated in the framework agreement to end a months-long Middle East war.
Announced late on Sunday, the agreement lays out a road map for ending the conflict through a ceasefire process, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a 60-day period of negotiations on more contentious issues, including Iran's nuclear programme, sanctions relief and longer-term regional security arrangements.
US Vice President JD Vance said on Monday that the preliminary deal had been signed digitally by the US and Iran, although details have yet to be made public and both countries said a permanent truce was yet to be negotiated.
President Donald Trump said the full text of the agreement will be released sometime after it is formally signed on Friday in Geneva.
Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said his country would be represented in the Geneva talks. He added that Pakistan will continue to play the role of the key intermediary between the US and Iran.
Pakistan emerged as the visible public broker of the talks, but Qatar was a facilitator in the background.
"We're very, very impressed with Qatar and the way they've handled things, because they were really on the line, they were in the front line, they were being shot at just about as much as anybody,” Mr Trump said at the G7 summit in France after talks on Tuesday with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim.
"I just want to really congratulate you on bravery,” Mr Trump told Sheikh Tamim, who said his country's target was to find a deal.
Qatar assumed an outsized role in the negotiations behind Pakistan because of its close ties to the Americans and because it holds at least $20 billion of Iran's frozen assets, according to Arab sources familiar with the mediation process.
Qatar has also enjoyed good relations with Iran over the years. It has had experience in several secret negotiations jointly conducted with Oman, another close US ally and a friend of Iran's, on issues involving the US, like securing the release from Iran of detained American citizens, one source told The National on Tuesday.
Choosing diplomacy
For weeks, Qatar, host of the largest US base in the region, publicly distanced itself from any mediation effort, despite its long history of acting as a diplomatic bridge between adversaries. That position changed in late May.
Doha refused to enter negotiations under Iranian fire. After a ceasefire took hold, it hosted an Iranian delegation to discuss the release of frozen funds.
During the war, Iran launched missile and drone attacks against targets in Qatar, damaging energy infrastructure and forcing Doha to reassess its posture towards the conflict.
Qatar shut down Ras Laffan, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility, in March after an Iranian attack. The shutdown triggered cargo cancellations and weighed on Qatar’s long-standing reputation as one of the world’s most reliable LNG suppliers. Ras Laffan accounts for roughly one-fifth of global LNG supply.
Still, Qatar was less severely affected than some of its Gulf neighbours. Iran launched strikes across all six Gulf Co-operation Council states in retaliation for US and Israeli air raids against it in February. Although Tehran said it was targeting US interests and military installations, the scale and pattern of the attacks and resulting civilian casualties belied that assertion.
Gulf officials have repeatedly made clear that diplomacy remains the preferred way to deal with Iran despite security concerns. They have publicly stressed that they favour regional de-escalation.
Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain all welcomed early on Monday the memorandum of understanding reached between the US and Iran, expressing support for upcoming negotiations between the two sides.
While the deal promises an end to the war, questions remain about whether it can hold and how it will be implemented.
"The details of what has been agreed is in hundreds and hundreds of pages. The experts who wrote them also number in the dozens,” said one of the sources.
The sources said dealing with Iran during weeks of talks to reach a deal exhausted the mediators and proved to be time-consuming, mostly because they sought to keep the deliberations confidential and also because of the difficulty of communications after the Iranian leadership was killed by US and Israeli strikes.
"It typically took the Iranians three to seven days to answer questions or reply to messages. They took their time just like the typical carpet makers of Iran who spend years doing meticulous work to weave just one carpet,” said another source.
