High‑level Iran‑US talks
U.S. and Iranian negotiators were due to meet in Islamabad in the most senior direct engagement since the 2015 diplomacy, but the opening looked fragile. Iran’s delegation reportedly arrived while Tehran insisted on preconditions that could stall or limit the scope of any agreement, making a breakthrough unlikely. The ceasefire remained shaky — Israel and Hezbollah continued exchanging fire and Washington warned of fresh strikes if talks fail — so diplomats are effectively trying damage control rather than a big deal. ( )
The United States and Iran were supposed to use talks in Islamabad on Saturday, April 11, to turn a two-week ceasefire into something sturdier, but they arrived with a live fire still burning around them. Iranian officials landed in Pakistan as Israel and Hezbollah kept trading strikes, and Washington was still warning that U.S. attacks could resume if the talks fail. (apnews.com) This is the highest-level direct contact between Washington and Tehran since the diplomacy that produced the 2015 nuclear deal. The American side was expected to include Vice President JD Vance with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which tells you the White House wanted this meeting to look like top-table bargaining, not a routine back-channel. (cbsnews.com) The problem is that the ceasefire was never a clean stop to one war. President Donald Trump tied the pause with Iran to demands that Tehran ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, while Israel kept fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and publicly disputed whether Lebanon was covered by the truce at all. (abcnews.com) That makes the Islamabad talks less like a peace conference and more like trying to repair an airplane while it is still in the air. One track is about the United States and Iran, but another track is about Israel’s campaign in Lebanon, and the two tracks keep crashing into each other. (apnews.com) Iran also came in saying it wanted more than a handshake and a photo. Reports on Friday said Tehran was insisting on preconditions including movement on Lebanon and other terms tied to its own proposal, which raised the odds that the opening session could stall before negotiators even reached the hardest issues. (aljazeera.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com) The Strait of Hormuz is the other clock ticking in the room. It is the narrow waterway used by a huge share of the world’s oil trade, and even after the ceasefire only a small number of ships were moving through it, keeping pressure on energy markets and on every government that wants this crisis cooled fast. (cbsnews.com, theguardian.com) Pakistan is hosting because neither Washington nor Tehran trusts the other enough to improvise the setting. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said both sides had confirmed participation, and Pakistan has been trying to sell itself as the neutral room where a temporary pause could be turned into a more formal arrangement. (bloomberg.com) Even that neutral room comes with limits. Iranian officials were saying they had goodwill but no trust in the United States, while Trump was posting that the only reason the Iranians were still alive was to negotiate, which is not the language of two sides quietly narrowing differences. (yahoo.com) So the most likely outcome was never a grand bargain by Saturday night. The realistic goal was a narrower one: stop the ceasefire from collapsing, keep the Strait of Hormuz from staying half-shut, and buy time before Israel-Hezbollah fighting or a new U.S. strike blows up the whole process. (time.com, nbcnews.com)
