WASHINGTON: Peace talks with Iran led by US Vice President Vance may not have been successful, but the 21-hour discussions helped build goodwill with Tehran’s new leadership, according to media reports.
The Washington Post cited unnamed U.S. officials as saying that the goodwill established during the talks in Islamabad led Washington to believe Iran might accept their terms to end the deadly and costly war.
According to reports, President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States is blocking the Strait of Hormuz may force Iran to agree to a deal.
“A U.S. official with knowledge of the negotiations, who requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said Vance was acutely aware of the risk of distrust and misunderstanding between the U.S. and Iran,” the report said.
The official said Vance and U.S. negotiators had developed a rapport and became more enthusiastic about each other.
Trump seemed to agree with that assessment. “We had a very intensive negotiation and, in the end, it became very amicable,” he told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We scored almost all the points we needed, except for the fact that they refused to give up their nuclear ambitions,” he said.
The Washington Post reported that after the negotiations began, it became clear to the U.S. team that the Iranians did not fully understand the far-reaching significance of the Trump administration’s insistence that any agreement must center on prohibiting Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has insisted for decades that it does not intend to build nuclear weapons – a commitment that Trump and his allies, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claim cannot be taken at face value.
The U.S. government insists that Iran must completely give up its nuclear enrichment capabilities, which can also be used for civilian purposes. Iran refuses to go that far and seems to want Trump to settle for less.
The official said Vance sought to correct that misunderstanding throughout the discussion.
But Vance also used the talks to try to decipher how Iran actually feels about its current situation and to determine that Iran believes it has more influence than U.S. officials believe it actually has, according to the U.S. official, who did not elaborate on the Iranians’ claims.
The official said the Trump administration now intends to test Iran after gaining a better understanding of its vulnerabilities.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
