Iran doubles down on its ‘red lines,’ while VP Vance warns US negotiators won’t be receptive to Iranian games; Trump claims US starting the process of clearing out Hormuz
ISLAMABAD — Senior US and Iranian officials met on Saturday in Islamabad for the highest-level talks between Washington and Tehran in half a century as they sought to bring an end to their six-week war. The direct talks between US Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, lasted for two hours before the delegations broke for a rest, according to a Pakistani source. Pakistan’s army chief was also present. As the talks began, there were conflicting accounts of what had been agreed.
A US official told Axios that several US Navy ships on Saturday had crossed the Strait of Hormuz, whose blockade by Iran has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies. But Iranian state TV and a Pakistani source denied that any US vessel had passed through the waterway. “We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote in a social media post, adding that all 28 of Iran’s mine-dropping ships had been sunk.
Earlier, a senior Iranian source told Reuters the US had agreed to release frozen assets held in Qatar and other foreign banks, an assertion swiftly denied by a US official. The senior Iranian source welcomed the purported move as a sign of “seriousness” in the talks. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the assertion about frozen assets. The direct talks followed a morning of mediation by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as Tehran laid down its red lines that it said Washington must accept before the face-to-face talks could take place. (Read more)
