Israel’s security cabinet authorized indirect engagement with the Pakistani-Saudi-Egyptian mediation track on Friday, clearing the way for U.S. negotiators in Islamabad to relay Israeli positions on verification and proxies and marking the first formal Israeli participation, however arms-length, since the talks began two weeks ago.

The decision, reached after a four-hour session at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, fell short of the open seat at the table that Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had publicly invited, but it removed what mediators had described as the single most stubborn structural obstacle to a written agreement. Officials briefed on the cabinet vote said it carried by a margin of nine to four, with two ministers from the religious-Zionist bloc abstaining and a third recording opposition in writing.

“The cabinet has decided that Israel will not negotiate against itself, and will not negotiate in public, but will participate seriously through the United States,” government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said at a briefing in West Jerusalem. “Our red lines are well known. Our partners in Washington understand them. The mediators understand them. What happens next is in the hands of the Iranian regime.”

The shift came as the Islamabad drafting cell, working from the framework principles paper first circulated last week, narrowed the text on a conditional halt to roughly four pages and resolved language on three of the five clusters mediators had identified: a phased cessation of strikes, a suspension of attacks on civilian energy infrastructure, and the status of detained foreigners. Two clusters remained open as of Friday evening — monitoring at the Strait of Hormuz, where the United States has pressed for a role beyond the Omani-chaired Muscat cell described in earlier drafts, and the placeholder on “post-hostilities arrangements,” which Iranian diplomats have insisted must include the unfreezing of specific financial channels.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, returning to Islamabad on Friday morning after a 36-hour consultation in Tehran, said the Iranian delegation had received “fresh instructions” from the Supreme National Security Council and was prepared to put pen to paper on a sequenced stand-down “if symmetric obligations are met.” He declined to characterize what fresh instructions meant, but two diplomats present at the morning session said the Iranian team had dropped its earlier insistence on language formally naming Israel as a party and had accepted a U.S. role as guarantor on the Israeli side.

Deputy Secretary of State Caroline Whitman, who has led the U.S. delegation since the talks gathered pace last week, met Araghchi twice on Friday in proximity sessions chaired by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. American officials said Whitman conveyed Israeli concerns about Hezbollah and about residual centrifuge capacity at Fordow, and that she had received what one official described as “useful, if not yet sufficient” responses on both points. Whitman herself, speaking briefly to reporters as she left the Pakistani Foreign Office shortly before midnight local time, said the parties were “closer than we were on Monday and further than we will be on Sunday.”

The Muscat monitoring cell, which mediators have positioned as the technical spine of any conditional halt, took further shape on Friday. Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Al Busaidi confirmed that a temporary operations room had been stood up at the Bait al-Falaj complex and that liaison officers from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Sultanate would chair monitoring shifts on a rotating basis, with seats reserved for Iranian and U.S. military representatives. The International Atomic Energy Agency, in a parallel statement from Vienna, said Director General Rafael Grossi had dispatched a three-person technical team to Muscat to “stand ready” to support verification at three named Iranian nuclear sites should a halt be agreed.

“The architecture is now visible, which is itself the news,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Levant Policy Forum. “A week ago we were debating whether there would be a paper. Today the paper has rooms in it — a verification room in Muscat, a guarantor room in Washington, a sequencing room in Islamabad. Whether the parties walk into those rooms is a different question, but the building exists.”

The diplomatic movement unfolded against another day of strikes that underscored how fragile any pause would be at the moment of signing. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed an overnight strike against what it described as a missile assembly hall in Khorramabad, in western Iran. Iranian state media reported casualties but did not specify a figure. Iranian forces, according to U.S. Central Command, fired four ballistic missiles toward Israeli territory, three of which were intercepted by Arrow batteries and the fourth of which fell in open ground east of Beersheba. In Iraq, a rocket attack against a logistics yard supporting U.S. forces at Erbil Air Base wounded two American service members, bringing the running U.S. casualty total since the war began past 370, according to a Pentagon tally released Friday afternoon.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jacqueline Park said President Trump had been briefed twice during the day by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. She said the administration would not characterize the talks publicly until a written response from Tehran had been received but described the trajectory of the week as “the most encouraging since the war began.” Asked whether the president was prepared to underwrite a U.S. guarantor role formally, Park said only that “we will not commit to what we cannot deliver, and we will not signal what we are not asked to deliver.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who spoke with President Trump by phone Friday evening according to a Saudi readout, urged Washington to “lock in the gains of this week” before the weekend hardened positions. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in a separate readout from Cairo, said the mediation troika would convene at foreign-minister level on Saturday to align positions before a possible communiqué.

Pakistani officials said the drafting cell was scheduled to work overnight on the two remaining clusters and that mediators expected a written Iranian and U.S. response on the consolidated text by Sunday morning. Dar, in a brief statement at the diplomatic enclave, said additional sessions, including a possible expansion to include an Iraqi observer and a Hezbollah-affiliated channel via the Lebanese foreign ministry, would be announced once the parties responded.