The diplomatic trip of American Vice President JD Vance to the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, where he was supposed to exert pressure on Iranian negotiators in order to conclude an agreement on the nuclear issue, was suspended after Tehran did not respond to the negotiating positions of the United States, according to an American official with direct knowledge of the situation, writes The New York Times (NYT).
Earlier, a White House official told Reuters news agency that the US vice president had not yet left Washington for the Iran talks and that Vance was attending additional meetings across the political spectrum.
Vance was due to leave Tuesday morning (US time) for the Pakistani capital, where talks were expected to resume on Wednesday – the same day the fragile truce between the United States and Iran expires. Without a response from Iran, the official said, the NYT quoted the official as saying, the diplomatic process is effectively on hold, although the departure has not been officially cancelled.
Diplomatic travel could resume at any time with the approval of President Donald Trump. US officials are also waiting for a clear sign that Iranian negotiators have been fully empowered to reach a deal.
The delay in Vance's departure is another obstacle to the Trump administration's efforts to secure a deal to limit Iran's nuclear program and comes as the Pentagon considers military options should Trump conclude that Tehran is not negotiating in good faith.
The official cited by the NYT also said that a resumption of bombing is not imminent, but the Pentagon continues to consider different options. The United States remains poised to launch a new wave of attacks while maintaining a substantial military presence in the Middle East.
The US recently sent the Iranians a written proposal designed to set out the basic points of the deal that could form the basis of more detailed negotiations. The document covers a wide range of issues, but the main sticking points are the same ones that have dogged Western negotiators for more than a decade: the extent of Iran's uranium enrichment program and the fate of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
It is not clear what exactly the United States proposed or what President Trump would be willing to accept. On uranium enrichment, the U.S. position could range from requiring Iran to abandon enrichment altogether to allowing a limited civilian program under strict International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision, accompanied by the closure of Iran's underground nuclear facilities.
One of the ideas discussed in last year's negotiations was the formation of a multinational consortium to work with Iran to enrich uranium for civilian purposes; among the potential locations was an island in the Persian Gulf. As for the stockpile of enriched uranium, negotiators are looking at various options, including whether Iran could hand over the enriched uranium directly to the United States or transfer it to a third country.
Also discussed is what the United States could offer in return. Iran has hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen assets under US sanctions as part of Trump's maximum pressure campaign, and administration officials are debating whether releasing some of those funds could be part of a final deal. Officials also discussed whether the United States and its Gulf partners, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, could offer Iran greater economic integration.
Trump has been adamant in private conversations that his deal must be better than the one struck by President Barack Obama in 2015. Knowing this, Iran hardliners close to the president have repeatedly invoked the Obama deal as a tactic to prevent Trump from accepting what they see as dangerous concessions.
Any US position on uranium enrichment, however, will face Iran's long-standing argument based on its adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guarantees signatories the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
The negotiations were led by a small circle within the Trump administration. JD Vance, along with Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, were the main American interlocutors, with Vance and Kushner, the president's son-in-law, doing most of the talking. On the Pakistani side, Marshal Syed Asim Munir established himself as the main channel of communication with the Iranians.
The break in negotiations comes after several turbulent days of public statements from Trump, whose statements have at times appeared at odds with the state of the negotiations.
In a phone interview with CBS News on Friday, Trump said Iran “has agreed to everything” and described a joint operation to recover Iranian nuclear material. “Our people, along with the Iranians, will work together to recover it. Then we will transport it to the United States,” the White House leader said. Iranian officials quickly disputed that claim.
Then on Sunday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran violated the ceasefire by attacking merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, including a French ship and a British freighter. On the same day, US military forces seized an Iranian-flagged vessel, the Touska, which Trump said was trying to evade the blockade imposed on Iran's ports.
The president threatened that his representatives would arrive in Islamabad the following evening for negotiations and warned that if Iran rejected what he called “a very fair and reasonable deal,” the United States would “destroy every power plant and every bridge in Iran.”
“DONE WITH MR. NICE!” he wrote.
