The US and Iran had been to carry negotiations within the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Saturday (Apr 11) to finish their six-week-old battle, though Tehran threw the talks into doubt by saying they might not start with out commitments on Lebanon and sanctions.
The US delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance and together with President Donald Trump’s particular envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, was on its approach to Islamabad after a refuelling cease in Paris.
The Iranian delegation, led by parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and International Minister Abbas Araqchi, arrived on Friday.
IRAN HAS “NO CARDS”, TRUMP SAYS
Qalibaf stated on X that Washington had beforehand agreed to unblock Iranian belongings and to a ceasefire in Lebanon, the place Israeli assaults on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants have killed almost 2,000 individuals for the reason that begin of the combating in March. He stated talks wouldn’t begin till these pledges had been fulfilled.
Israel and the US have stated the Lebanon marketing campaign isn’t a part of the Iran-US ceasefire whereas Tehran insists it’s.
Qalibaf stated individually that Iran was prepared to achieve a deal if Washington provided what he described as a real settlement and granted Iran its rights, Iranian state media reported.
The White Home didn’t instantly touch upon the Iranian calls for, however Trump posted on social media that the one motive the Iranians had been alive was to barter a deal.
“The Iranians do not appear to grasp they haven’t any playing cards, apart from a brief time period extortion of the World by utilizing Worldwide Waterways. The one motive they’re alive at this time is to barter!” he stated.
Vance, speaking as he headed to Pakistan, stated he anticipated a optimistic end result however added: “If they are going to attempt to play us, then they are going to discover the negotiating group isn’t that receptive.”
Islamabad was beneath an unprecedented lockdown on Saturday with hundreds of paramilitary personnel and armed forces troops on the streets forward of what Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif known as “make-or-break” talks.
Trump introduced a two-week ceasefire within the battle on Tuesday, which has halted US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
Nevertheless it has not ended Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has brought about the biggest-ever disruption to world power provides, or calmed the parallel battle between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
FIGHTING CONTINUES IN LEBANON
The Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, and his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, will maintain talks in Washington on Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese officers stated, amid the conflicting accounts on what these talks would cowl.
Lebanon’s presidency stated the 2 had held a cellphone name on Friday and agreed to debate saying a ceasefire and setting a begin date for bilateral talks beneath US mediation. However Israel’s embassy in Washington stated the talks would represent the beginning of “formal peace negotiations” and that Israel had refused to debate a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Israeli assaults continued throughout southern Lebanon on Friday. One strike on a authorities constructing within the metropolis of Nabatieh killed 13 members of Lebanon’s state safety forces, President Joseph Aoun stated in an announcement.
Hezbollah stated in an announcement on its Telegram channel that it fired rocket salvos at northern Israeli cities in response.
Hours after the ceasefire was introduced, Israel launched the biggest attack of the battle, killing greater than 350 individuals in shock strikes on closely populated areas, Lebanese authorities stated.
Tehran’s agenda on the talks additionally contains calls for for main new concessions, together with the top of sanctions that crippled its economic system for years, and acknowledgment of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, the place it goals to gather transit charges and management entry in what would quantity to an enormous shift in regional energy.
Iran’s ships had been crusing by the strait unimpeded on Friday, whereas these of different international locations remained hemmed inside.
Disruption to power provides has fed inflation and slowed the worldwide economic system, with an impression anticipated to final for months even when negotiators reach reopening the strait.
The onerous line taken by Iran’s leaders forward of the negotiations adopted a defiant message from its new Supreme Chief Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday.
Khamenei, but to be seen in public since taking up from his father, who was killed on the battle’s first day, stated Iran would demand compensation for all wartime harm.
“We will definitely not depart unpunished the prison aggressors who attacked our nation,” he stated.
Though Trump has declared victory and degraded Iran’s navy capabilities, the battle has not achieved most of the goals he set out in the beginning: to deprive Iran of the power to strike its neighbours, dismantle its nuclear programme, and make it simpler for its individuals to overthrow their authorities.
Iran nonetheless possesses missiles and drones able to hitting its neighbours and a stockpile of greater than 400kg of uranium enriched close to the extent wanted to make a bomb. Its clerical rulers, who confronted a preferred rebellion simply months in the past, withstood the onslaught with no signal of organised opposition.
