Trump cancels his envoys’ Pakistan trip for Iran ceasefire negotiations

Trump added to Fox News: “They can call us anytime they want.” The White House on Friday said Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would travel to Pakistan’s capital to attempt to revive ceasefire negotiations.

Iran ’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, left Pakistan on Saturday evening, two Pakistani officials told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Araghchi had met with the Pakistani army chief field marshal, Asim Munir, and the Pakistani 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”. Iran had said talks would be indirect.

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 US after talks last year and early this year over Tehran’s nuclear program ended with it being attacked by the US and Israel.

Islamabad had been in near-lockdown ahead of the expected talks. Pakistan has been trying to get US and Iran back to the negotiating table since Trump this week announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire, honoring Islamabad’s request for more diplomatic outreach.

The White House on Friday said the US president 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 US side by JD Vance, lasted more than 20 hours and were face-to-face, the highest-level direct talks between the longtime adversaries since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Araghchi and Trump’s envoys held hours of indirect talks in Geneva on 27 February but walked away without a deal. The next day, Israel and the United States started the war.

The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, is still nearly 50% 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 US maintains a blockade on Iranian ports. Trump has ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be placing mines.

Germany’s defense 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 squeeze on shipments through the strait has rippled through global maritime trade, including through the Panama canal, nearly halfway around the world.

Also on Saturday, Iran resumed commercial flights from Tehran’s international airport for the first time since the war began with US 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.

Since the war began, authorities say 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 Iran war started.

Additionally, 23 people have been killed in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, 13 US service members in the region and six members of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon have also been killed.

Trump announced on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah by three weeks. Hezbollah has not participated in the Washington-brokered diplomacy.