United States Vice President JD Vance has departed for Pakistan to engage in talks on ending the US-Israeli war with Iran, saying he expects “positive” results.
Vance spoke briefly to reporters on Friday as he boarded a plane bound for Islamabad, where talks with Iran were set to be held the following day.
United States Vice President JD Vance has departed for Pakistan to engage in talks on ending the US-Israeli war with Iran, saying he expects “positive” results.
Vance spoke briefly to reporters on Friday as he boarded a plane bound for Islamabad, where talks with Iran were set to be held the following day.
United States Vice President JD Vance has departed for Pakistan to engage in talks on ending the US-Israeli war with Iran, saying he expects “positive” results.
Vance spoke briefly to reporters on Friday as he boarded a plane bound for Islamabad, where talks with Iran were set to be held the following day.
“One of the reasons, possibly, is because the Iranians had expressed their preference for dealing with Vance, rather than the other envoys who they have been dealing with.”
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are expected to lead the Iranian delegation, although it is not clear if any representative from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would attend.
The format of negotiations, and whether the US and Iranian officials would speak face to face or through intermediaries, was not revealed as of Friday.
From threat to ‘destroy civilisation’ to talks
The talks on Saturday will cap an extraordinary week in the war, which saw Trump threaten strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, if Tehran did not agree to his terms.
International law experts have said such strikes would likely constitute war crimes.
On Tuesday, just hours before the temporary ceasefire was announced, Trump went further, pledging that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if a deal was not reached.
While the pause in fighting has generally held, both sides have offered conflicting messages on the agreed-upon terms.
The Trump administration said it agreed to a 10-point plan put forward by Iran, but maintained the points are different from an earlier 10-point proposal it previously rejected.
No clarity has emerged on key issues, including control over the Strait of Hormuz, the future of Iran’s nuclear programme, and whether Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is subject to the ceasefire.
Both the US and Israel have maintained that pausing the fighting in Lebanon was not part of the initial ceasefire agreement, contradicting claims from Iran and Pakistan.
However, on Thursday, in a phone interview with an Israeli journalist, Trump said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make the operations in Lebanon more “low key”, so as not to derail the talks in Pakistan.
In a phone interview with the New York Post on Friday, Trump re-upped his threat, saying the US was “loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made” in the event the talks fall through.
Ghalibaf, meanwhile, cast doubt on whether the negotiations would move forward.
In a post on X on Friday, he maintained two conditions of the initial agreement had not yet been fulfilled. They included the “ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations”.