US–Iran talks in Pakistan
Top-level U.S. and Iranian delegations met in Pakistan in the last 48 hours for the highest-level talks in decades aimed at ending the six-week war. Iran’s spokesman attended the talks and warned the country still has a “finger on the trigger.” (x.com) (x.com)
The United States and Iran opened direct talks in Islamabad on Saturday, their highest-level meeting since 1979, to try to turn a shaky ceasefire into an end to six weeks of war. (apnews.com) Vice President JD Vance led the U.S. side, alongside envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while Iran sent Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi after separate meetings with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Islamabad. (y94.com) The talks ran late into the night and into early Sunday in Pakistan, with Pakistani officials acting as intermediaries after a two-week ceasefire announced on April 8 failed to settle disputes over shipping, sanctions and fighting in Lebanon. (apnews.com) (news.un.org) At the center of the negotiations is the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries a large share of the world’s oil and gas shipments. Washington wants Iran to reopen it fully; Tehran has tied that to demands for access to frozen assets, compensation for war damage and a broader regional ceasefire. (y94.com) Iran’s government spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, said Tehran would negotiate with its “finger on the trigger,” a public signal that Iran is treating the diplomacy as provisional and reversible. A U.S. official, meanwhile, denied an Iranian claim that Washington had already agreed to release frozen Iranian funds held abroad. (y94.com) The meeting is unusual because Washington and Tehran have had almost no direct senior-level contact since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The last comparable top-level contact cited by the Associated Press was President Barack Obama’s 2013 call with Hassan Rouhani, followed by the long negotiations that produced the 2015 nuclear deal. (apnews.com) Pakistan is hosting because it already helped broker the April 8 pause in fighting and has working ties with both governments. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Asim Munir received the U.S. delegation in Islamabad, underscoring how central Pakistan has become to this round of diplomacy. (news.un.org) (y94.com) The war the talks are trying to stop has spread beyond Iran and the United States. The Associated Press reported death tolls of at least 3,000 in Iran, 2,020 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states, while Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon have continued despite the U.S.-Iran ceasefire. (apnews.com) As negotiators met, the U.S. military said two destroyers transited the Strait of Hormuz ahead of mine-clearing work, though Iranian state media said the joint military command denied that account. That split captured the basic shape of the talks in Islamabad: active diplomacy, active military pressure, and no settled version of events yet. (apnews.com)
