United States Vice President JD Vance will head to Pakistan later this week to head the delegation for talks on a sustained peace agreement with Iran, said White House on Wednesday (local time).
Along with Vance, US’ special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, will also go to Pakistan to participate in the talks.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the first round of discussions will be begin on Saturday morning in Islamabad.
“I can announce that the president is dispatching his negotiating team led by the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, Special Envoy Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, to Islamabad for talks this weekend,” Leavitt said during a press briefing.
“We know we look forward to those in-person meetings,” she said.
She added that Vance would “be leading this new phase of negotiations.”
After the announcement, Vance called on Iran to take “next step” and said that President Trump has options to “go back to war” otherwise.
His remarks came as Iran again closed the Strait of Hormuz, which the White House said was “completely unacceptable”.
Iran claims ceasefire violations
The announcement comes a day after a ceasefire was announced between the United States and Iran, which was flouted just hours later as Israel pounded Lebanon and killed over a hundred people, prompting a sharp response from Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post on X that the United States must choose between either continuing the war through Israel or respect the terms of ceasefire.
“The Iran–U.S. Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
“The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments,” he added.
Without particularly naming the attacks on Lebanon, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also said that ceasefire violence were reported “at few places across the conflict zone”.
“I earnestly and sincerely urge all parties to exercise restraint and respect the ceasefire for two weeks, as agreed upon, so that diplomacy can take a lead role towards peaceful settlement of the conflict,” Sharif wrote as he is getting ready to host delegations from both the parties for what he named ‘Islamabad Talks’.
However, US Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that while Tehran’s negotiators thought that Lebanon was included in the US-Iran ceasefire agreed to on Tuesday, the American side had not agreed to that.
He also said that Israel has agreed to keep itself in check in Lebanon.
