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Iran’s foreign minister left Pakistan on Saturday evening, two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press, before any sign that U.S. envoys had even arrived for indirect talks on the fragile ceasefire.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was seen off at an airport, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. He had met with Pakistani army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif about what he called Iran’s red lines for negotiations, and said Tehran would engage with Pakistan’s mediation efforts “until a result is achieved.”
It was unclear when U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were due to arrive in Islamabad. The White House declined to comment.
An open-ended ceasefire has paused most fighting, but the economic fallout grows with global shipments of oil, liquefied natural gas, fertilizer and other supplies disrupted by the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian officials have openly asked how they can trust the U.S. after talks last year and early this year over Tehran’s nuclear program ended with it being attacked by the U.S. and Israel.
U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, will represent their country at peace talks with Iranian officials in Islamabad.
Iran has said talks will be indirect
Islamabad had been in near-lockdown ahead of the expected talks. Pakistan has been trying to get U.S. and Iran back to the table since Trump this week announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire, honouring Islamabad’s request for more diplomatic outreach.
The White House on Friday said Trump was sending Witkoff and Kushner to meet with Araghchi. But Iran’s Foreign Ministry said any talks would be indirect and Pakistani officials would convey messages.
The first round of talks in Pakistan, led on the U.S. side by Vice-President JD Vance, lasted over 20 hours and were face-to-face, the highest-level direct talks between the longtime adversaries since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Iran seized two container ships after firing on three vessels in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Iranian officials also slammed now-stalled peace talks with the U.S. as ‘hypocritical’ and ’empty.’
Araghchi and the two Trump envoys held hours of indirect talks in Geneva on Feb. 27 over Tehran’s nuclear program, but walked away without a deal. The next day, Israel and the United States started the war against Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president had decided to send Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan “to hear the Iranians out.”
“We’ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days,” Leavitt said. She did not offer any details about what U.S. officials were hearing.
Standoff over Strait of Hormuz continues
The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, is still nearly 50 per cent higher than when the war began, because of Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in peacetime.
Iran attacked three ships this week, while the U.S. maintains a blockade on Iranian ports. Trump has ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be placing mines.
Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Saturday his country is sending minesweeper ships to the Mediterranean to help remove Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end.
The effective shutdown of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has caused the ‘biggest energy security threat in history,’ says Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Ryan Cummings of the Stanford Institute for Economy Policymaking says the closure so far is the equivalent of a billion barrels of oil missing from the economy.
The squeeze on shipments through the strait has rippled through global maritime trade, including through the Panama Canal nearly halfway around the world.
Also Saturday, Iran resumed commercial flights from Tehran’s international airport for the first time since the war began with U.S. and Israeli strikes two months ago. Flights were scheduled to depart for Istanbul, Oman’s capital of Muscat and the Saudi city of Medina, according to Iran’s state-run television. Iran partly reopened its airspace earlier this month due to the ceasefire.
A growing toll even as ceasefires hold
Since the war began, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,490 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the war started, according to authorities.
Additionally, 23 people were killed in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
Trump announced Thursday that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend a ceasefire by three weeks. Hezbollah has not participated in the Washington-brokered diplomacy.