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Vice President Vance is expected to travel to Islamabad soon to lead a U.S. delegation for a second round of peace talks with Iran ahead of the expiration of a two-week ceasefire on Wednesday.
But the prospects for renewed diplomacy remain unclear. Iranian state media said Tuesday that no Iranian delegations have traveled to Islamabad “so far,” while President Trump told Bloomberg News on Monday that a renewal of the ceasefire was “highly unlikely.”
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker, accused the United States late Monday of forcing Iran to the negotiating table and said that on the contrary, Iran has been preparing “to reveal new cards on the battlefield.”
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats,” Qalibaf wrote in a post on social media.
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Officials in Islamabad say the city remains ready to host the talks, though Pakistan’s government has given no formal indication about the status of its ongoing mediation efforts.
The first round of talks, held just over a week ago in Islamabad, ended without an agreement. Vance later accused Iran of refusing to accept Washington’s terms on Iran’s plans for nuclear enrichment.
With President Trump saying the Iran ceasefire will expire Wednesday evening Eastern time, here are the main sticking points in the negotiations:
What is the U.S. asking Iran to do?
For officials in Washington, the main points of contention remain control over the Strait of Hormuz and the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
The Trump administration has said it wants commercial shipping through the strategic waterway to be fully restored. Around 20% of the world’s crude oil and natural gas passes through the narrow strait.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, Iran’s main leverage over the U.S. has been its control of the strait, including the collection of tolls from commercial ships passing through it as a condition for reopening the waterway.
“The weaker party gains just by virtue of entering into a negotiation process,” Mark Freeman, executive director of the Institute for Integrated Transitions, a peace and security think tank based in Spain, told NPR.
Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz has rattled global markets, raising the national average price of gas above $4 a gallon.
The other big demand coming from Washington centers on Iran’s nuclear program – and whether Tehran will accept limits on nuclear enrichment.
In an interview with The John Fredericks Show Monday, an AM radio talk show, President Trump said Iran would return to negotiations, but insisted Tehran “will not have a nuclear weapon.”
“They’re going to negotiate,” Trump said. “And if they don’t, they’re going to see problems like they’ve never seen before.”
Trump has consistently said that one of the main objectives of the war with Iran is to ensure that it never has a nuclear weapon. In his first interview after the fighting started, he said he believed Iran was “going to attack first” if the United States did not act. Trump did not cite intelligence to support that claim.
Vice President Vance said the first round of ceasefire talks held over a week ago broke down because Iran would not commit to forgoing a nuclear weapon.
“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
For Iran, Lebanon and end to blockade remain key demands
For Tehran, the key demands for extending the ceasefire include an end to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and guarantees that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah would not resume.
Israel and Lebanon entered a 10-day ceasefire last week, pausing fighting between Israel’s military and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. That ceasefire is still holding.
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Iran had earlier refused to engage in more negotiations with the United States unless Israel stopped its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel, however, has vowed to keep its troops in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah said the Lebanese people maintain the “right to resist” Israeli forces in the country.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah broke out shortly after the start of the war with Iran on Feb. 28, with Hezbollah firing rockets into northern Israel in a show of solidarity with Tehran. Israeli forces responded with airstrikes and an invasion of southern Lebanon in an effort to create a “buffer zone” to distance Hezbollah fire from Israeli border communities.
Israel’s strikes have killed more than 2,100 people and displaced over 1 million in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities. Hezbollah’s attacks have killed at least 12 Israeli soldiers and two civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
As for the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, Iran has made it clear it sees lifting the blockade as a condition for further diplomacy.
After the first round of ceasefire talks in Islamabad ended without an agreement, the U.S. military blockaded Iranian shipping ports, in a bid to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as well as put economic pressure on Iran to end the war. The U.S. Navy says it has forced 27 ships to turn back since the blockade began.
Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz for a second time, after briefly reopening the key shipping route for less than a day.
Iranian officials have also signaled they want financial relief, including access to $6 billion in frozen assets, and do not want to negotiate while Washington keeps up military and economic pressure.
Rebecca Rosman contributed to this report from London.
