- US Vice President JD Vance and his negotiating team leave Pakistan after 21 hours of negotiations
- Iran’s foreign ministry says no expectation that talks with the US could have reached an agreement within one session
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign minister insisted on Sunday Washington and Tehran must uphold the ceasefire agreement, after marathon talks between the two sides to end the war in the Middle East ended without an agreement.
“It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to ceasefire,” said Ishaq Dar, whose government hosted the talks and acted as a mediator.
“Pakistan has been and will continue to play its role to facilitate engagement and dialogue between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America in the days to come,” he said in a brief statement broadcast by state media.
US Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that his negotiating team was leaving Pakistan after not reaching a deal with Iran following 21 hours of negotiations, jeopardizing a fragile two-week ceasefire.
“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance told reporters after the talks ended. “So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”
Vance cited shortcomings in the talks and said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including to not build nuclear weapons. A short time later, Vance waved goodbye from the top of the stairs as he boarded Air Force Two in Islamabad.
“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said that “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement and that negotiations had ended. Before Vance spoke, Iran’s government in a post on X had said negotiations would continue and technical experts from both sides would exchange documents.
Tehran says no one had expectation of reaching agreement with US in one session: state TV
Iran’s foreign ministry said no one had held any expectation that talks with the United States could have reached an agreement within one session after the negotiations in Islamabad stalled on Sunday.
“Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. No one had such an expectation,” ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.
He said Tehran was “confident that contacts between us and Pakistan, as well as our other friends in the region, will continue.”
Highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution
The talks in Islamabad were the first direct US-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In his brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for about 20 percent of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked since the war began.
The conflict has sent global oil prices soaring and killed thousands of people. Vance’s delegation included special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Vance said he talked with Trump a half a dozen to a dozen times during the talks. Iran’s team included Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
The Iranian delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war. They carried shoes and bags of some students killed during the US bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said. The Pentagon has said the strike is under investigation but Reuters has reported that military investigators believe the US was likely responsible for it.
“There were mood swings from the two sides and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” a Pakistani source said in reference to the first round of talks.
For the US-Iran talks, Islamabad, a city of more than 2 million people, was locked down with thousands of paramilitary personnel and army troops on the streets. Pakistan’s mediating role is a remarkable transformation for a nation that was a diplomatic outcast a year ago.
Strait of Hormuz
As the talks started, the US military said it was “setting the conditions” to start clearing the Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait of Hormuz is central to the ceasefire talks. The US military said two of its warships had passed through the strait and conditions were being set to clear mines, while Iran’s state media denied any US ships had transited the waterway. Before the talks began, a senior Iranian source told Reuters the US had agreed to release frozen assets in Qatar and other foreign banks. A US official denied agreeing to release the money.
As well as the release of assets abroad, Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials.
Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.
US ally Israel, which joined the February 28 attacks on Iran that launched the war, has also been bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and says that conflict is not part of the Iran-US ceasefire.
Face to face talks, mood swings
Witkoff and Kushner met Qalibaf and Araghchi for two hours before a rest, according to a source from mediator Pakistan.
The Iranian delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war. They carried shoes and bags of some students killed during the US bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.
The Pentagon has said the strike is under investigation but Reuters has reported that military investigators believe the US was likely responsible for it.
“There were mood swings from the two sides and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” another Pakistani source said in reference to the first round of talks.
For the US-Iran talks, Islamabad, a city of more than 2 million people, was locked down with thousands of paramilitary personnel and army troops on the streets. Pakistan’s mediating role is a remarkable transformation for a nation that was a diplomatic outcast a year ago.
Mutual distrust
Qalibaf, speaking shortly after landing in Pakistan, made clear that Iran remained highly suspicious of the United States.
“Our experience in negotiating with the Americans has always been met with failure and broken promises,” Qalibaf said.
Vance said before leaving for Pakistan that if Iran was “willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand”.
But he said the United States would not be receptive “if they’re going to try to play us”.
Experts said Iran’s delegation showed it was serious about leaving Pakistan with a deal.
“The size, seniority and breadth of the Iranian delegation … signal both Tehran’s sincerity in these negotiations and its expectations and confidence,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and author of a book on US-Iran diplomacy.
Israel has insisted that the ceasefire does not affect its invasion of Lebanon, where Israel has carried out massive strikes and sent troops in response to fire from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia Muslim movement.
BY: The Times Union – AFP – REUTERS
