No Deal! Vance Walks Away From Iran Talks in Pakistan
Vice President JD Vance said Saturday evening that the US delegation had decided to end peace negotiations with Iran in Pakistan after the Islamist regime refused to accept US terms.
Speaking alongside White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad, Vice President Vance said that after 21 hours of negotiations it became clear that no deal with Iran could be reached and so US negotiators had decided to walk away from the table.
“We’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians, that’s good news. The bad news is we haven’t reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran, much more than it is bad news for the United States of America. So we’re going back to the United States of America without a deal,” Vance said.
“We’ve made it very clear what our red lines are, what are the things that we’re willing to accommodate them on and what are the things that we’re not willing to accommodate them on, and we’ve made that as clear as possible, and we may have chosen not to agree to our terms,” Vance said.
The vice president declined to disclose full details of the negotiations, but said Washington needed a “firm commitment” from Tehran that the regime would not seek to build a nuclear weapon or the tools that would allow it to quickly build a nuclear weapon.
“That’s one of the fundamental goals of the president of the United States and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve in these negotiations. Their nuclear program, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, have been destroyed,” he said.
“But the simple question is: Do we see a fundamental commitment on the part of the Iranians to not develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just in two years, but over the long term? We haven’t seen it yet. We hope we will.”
Vance told reporters, according to NBC News, that the U.S. delegation left the negotiations with a “very simple proposal, a method of agreement that is our final and best offer. We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.”
The talks in Pakistan were quickly convened earlier this week after Iran relented – apparently under pressure from its allies in Communist China – and agreed to a ceasefire just hours before President Trump’s Tuesday evening deadline for further strikes on national infrastructure, including bridges and power facilities.
While President Trump has said that any peace deal would require Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program, the “maximalist ten-point plan” presented by the Iranians argued that Tehran had the right to enrich uranium.
Besides the fate of the Islamist regime’s nuclear program, the most pressing issue after the failure of the negotiations will likely be the status of the Strait of Hormuz.
The vital waterway, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and through which around a fifth of the world’s oil reserves pass, has been closed since early last month after Iran claimed it had released mines into the strait.
On Saturday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Peterson and the USS Michael Murphy, had begun preparations to launch a mine-clearing mission to clear the strait.
Difficult under normal circumstances, the operation would be even more complicated because Iran allegedly lost track of where some of the mines were placed, either by failing to initially record their location or by failing to properly secure them to prevent drift.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or by email to: kzindulka@breitbart.com
