According to media reports, US Vice President Vance may travel to Islamabad on Tuesday for peace talks with Iran to end the seven-week war.
On Monday, President Donald Trump told the New York Post that a delegation led by Vance was on its way to Islamabad, while other media reported that the vice president was spending much of his time in Washington.
Vance is expected to arrive in Islamabad as the two-week ceasefire agreed between the United States and Iran on April 8 comes to an end, and Trump has threatened to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants if the two sides fail to reach a deal.
With Vance expected to arrive in Islamabad later Tuesday, Trump effectively extended the ceasefire by one day to Wednesday.
US news outlet Axios quoted three US sources as saying: “Vice President Vance is expected to travel to Islamabad on Tuesday morning to hold talks with Iran on a potential deal to end the war.”
Vance is expected to be joined by special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
The fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran was tested again on Sunday when a U.S. guided-missile destroyer opened fire on and seized an Iranian cargo ship after it tried to break a U.S. naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman, further angering the Iranians.
Axios reported that mediators from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey urged the Iranian team to attend the meeting, but sources said the Iranian team did not leave until it received approval from Iran’s supreme leader.
The New York Times also quoted two Iranian officials earlier on Monday as saying that an Iranian delegation planned to travel to Islamabad.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baghr Ghalibaf is expected to lead the delegation.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Axios said the Iranians were at an impasse after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards apparently put pressure on negotiators to take a tougher stance – making it impossible to negotiate without an end to the U.S. blockade.
“Because of President Trump’s negotiating prowess, the United States has never been as close to a good deal with Iran as we were with the terrible deal that was struck by the Obama administration,” White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt told Fox News.
“Anyone who doesn’t see President Trump’s strategy of playing the long game is either stupid or willfully ignorant,” she said Monday night.
CNN quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying that during the first round of talks on April 11, U.S. negotiators proposed a 20-year suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities.
Iran offered a five-year pause, but the United States rejected it, according to a U.S. official.
Trump insisted on Monday that he felt no pressure to reach a deal despite the war’s growing unpopularity with the American public and its role in rising oil prices.
“I don’t feel any pressure, even though it will all happen relatively quickly!” he wrote in The Truth Society.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
