Getting serious, Obama skipped sending a sternly worded letter. Update to this story.

Via JPost

In a rare high-level meeting between the United States and Iran on Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry will ask Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to halt Iranian weapons shipments to Gaza, after hundreds of those rockets have been fired into Israel from the coastal Palestinian territory over the last month.

“Iran has a longstanding record of supplying weapons, rockets, to various terror groups in Gaza, including Hamas,” one senior Obama administration official said from Vienna. “Those rockets are being used to fire at civilian areas, and Iran has a responsibility to cease and desist from continuing to supply weapons in this conflict.”

Israel’s government launched Operation Protective Edge five days ago to eliminate those stockpiles and their facilitators, held not only by Hamas, but by other Islamist groups opposed to the existence of the Jewish state.

“Any opportunity that we get to communicate that message to them, we will take,” the official added.

Since rapprochement first began between the two nations at the United Nations General Assembly last fall— after over three decades of frozen relations— the foreign ministers from Iran and the United States have met only once before.

They convene in Vienna with their counterparts Sunday primarily to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, which officials here say are still far from a comprehensive agreement. Those talks are set to expire on July 20.