Over the weekend, US diplomats met with Houthi representatives at the US embassy in Oman. The meeting was confirmed by Axios on Tuesday. The United States was represented by diplomats; the ambassador did not attend. The Houthi representatives said they wanted the May 2025 ceasefire with the United States to continue. The US has designated the Houthis as a terrorist organisation. The US embassy in Oman hosted them for a meeting about the Red Sea.
The Oman location is specific. In May, DiploPolis covered the piece titled 'Blow Them Up' — Trump's threat to destroy Oman for trying to mediate between the US and Iran in the early weeks of the war. Oman persisted. It mediated the Hormuz framework that Iran finalised on September 14. It hosted the US embassy in which American diplomats met Houthi representatives over the weekend. The country Trump threatened to blow up has become the most consequential diplomatic venue of the Iran war. Both the Iran deal and the Houthi meeting happened in Oman. Both involved the US and parties it has simultaneously been bombing.
The meeting's subject was the Red Sea. The Houthis have been targeting commercial shipping and Saudi oil infrastructure since the war began in February. The US has been responding with strikes on Houthi positions. The naval confrontation between the US and the Houthis is the maritime dimension of the same conflict that produced the tanker strikes, the Jordan missile launches and the Khamis Mushait strike. US diplomats met the Houthis in Oman on the weekend and discussed it.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters something more significant. He said Iran wanted to make a deal and that he had heard from Iran 'directly' — without elaborating. Direct US-Iran communication has not been publicly confirmed at any point in the 200-day war. All previous contact has been mediated: through Pakistan (the Islamabad MOU), through Qatar (Kushner's meetings), through Oman (the Hormuz framework) and through Gulf states (the August calls). Trump said on Tuesday that Iran had contacted the US directly. He said it without elaborating.
Trump is expected to meet Gulf leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York next Tuesday to discuss postwar strategy. Netanyahu wants to meet Trump but no meeting has been scheduled. Iran's President Pezeshkian is being allowed to attend the General Assembly — the US is required to permit access under the 1947 UN headquarters agreement. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been denied a visa for the second consecutive year. The UNGA week is the diplomatic architecture in which all of these conversations will take place simultaneously.
The Houthi meeting in Oman was not announced. It was confirmed by Axios two days after it happened. The direct Iranian contact was not announced. It was said by Trump in a press availability. The Hormuz deal was confirmed by a spokesman and described as pending announcement. The formal diplomatic track is at the UN General Assembly next week. The actual diplomacy is in Oman, in a press conference without elaboration, in an embassy meeting room where the ambassador did not attend.
