The U.S. and Iran were to hold negotiations in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Saturday to end their six-week-old war, although Tehran threw the talks into doubt by saying they could not begin without commitments on Lebanon and sanctions.
The U.S. delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance and including President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, was on its way to Islamabad after a refuelling stop in Paris.
The Iranian delegation, led by parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, arrived on Friday.
IRAN HAS ‘NO CARDS’, TRUMP SAYS
Qalibaf said on X that Washington had previously agreed to unblock Iranian assets and to a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israeli attacks on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants have killed nearly 2,000 people since the start of the fighting in March. He said talks would not start until those pledges were fulfilled.
Israel and the U.S. have said the Lebanon campaign is not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire while Tehran insists it is.
Qalibaf said separately that Iran was ready to reach a deal if Washington offered what he described as a genuine agreement and granted Iran its rights, Iranian state media reported.
The White House did not immediately comment on the Iranian demands, but Trump posted on social media that the only reason the Iranians were alive was to negotiate a deal.
“The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” he said.
Vance, speaking as he headed to Pakistan, said he expected a positive outcome but added: “If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Islamabad was under an unprecedented lockdown on Saturday with thousands of paramilitary personnel and army troops on the streets ahead of what Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called “make-or-break” talks.
Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the war on Tuesday, which has halted U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
But it has not ended Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or calmed the parallel war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
FIGHTING CONTINUES IN LEBANON
The Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, and his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, will hold talks in Washington on Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese officials said, amid the conflicting accounts on what those talks would cover.
Lebanon’s presidency said the two had held a phone call on Friday and agreed to discuss announcing a ceasefire and setting a start date for bilateral talks under U.S. mediation. But Israel’s embassy in Washington said the talks would constitute the start of “formal peace negotiations” and that Israel had refused to discuss a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Israeli attacks continued across southern Lebanon on Friday. One strike on a government building in the city of Nabatieh killed 13 members of Lebanon’s state security forces, President Joseph Aoun said in a statement.
Hezbollah said in a statement on its Telegram channel that it fired rocket salvos at northern Israeli towns in response.
Hours after the ceasefire was announced, Israel launched the biggest attack of the war, killing more than 350 people in surprise strikes on heavily populated areas, Lebanese authorities said.
Tehran’s agenda at the talks also includes demands for major new concessions, including the end of sanctions that crippled its economy for years, and acknowledgment of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, where it aims to collect transit fees and control access in what would amount to a huge shift in regional power.
Iran’s ships were sailing through the strait unimpeded on Friday, while those of other countries remained hemmed inside.
Disruption to energy supplies has fed inflation and slowed the global economy, with an impact expected to last for months even if negotiators succeed in reopening the strait.
The hard line taken by Iran’s leaders ahead of the negotiations followed a defiant message from its new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday.
Khamenei, yet to be seen in public since taking over from his father, who was killed on the war’s first day, said Iran would demand compensation for all wartime damage.
“We will certainly not leave unpunished the criminal aggressors who attacked our country,” he said.
Although Trump has declared victory and degraded Iran’s military capabilities, the war has not achieved many of the aims he set out at the start: to deprive Iran of the ability to strike its neighbours, dismantle its nuclear programme, and make it easier for its people to overthrow their government.
Iran still possesses missiles and drones capable of hitting its neighbours and a stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of uranium enriched near the level needed to make a bomb. Its clerical rulers, who faced a popular uprising just months ago, withstood the onslaught with no sign of organised opposition.
(Reuters)