President Donald Trump announced the US and Iran may resume talks in Pakistan in the next two days. Islamabad is attempting to broker an agreement between Washington and Tehran to end the war in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Trump told The New York Post that talks with Iran “could be happening over next two days.” An American delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, Steve Wittkoff, and Jared Kushner, met with Iranian officials in Pakistan on Saturday.
The talks were set up under a ceasefire deal mediated by Islamabad. The two-week truce was agreed to on April 7 and was intended to cover the entire Middle East. However, Israel has refused to stop attacking Lebanon, and Washington and Tel Aviv now claim that Hezbollah is not a party to the ceasefire. Both Tehran and Islamabad say that the truce did include all warring parties, including Lebanon.
Trump claimed that the talks in Pakistan failed over the weekend because Iran refused to commit to not building a nuclear weapon. However, Tehran has had a decades-long policy against obtaining a nuclear weapon.
US officials told Axios on Monday that the current impasse is over the length of the moratorium on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Washington is demanding that Tehran halt all uranium enrichment for two decades, while Iran says it will accept a five-year pause.
The White House argues that Iran’s possession of nuclear enrichment capabilities is equivalent to a nuclear weapons program. However, Tehran has enriched uranium to create nuclear fuel and medication. Several countries with a nuclear enrichment program do not have nuclear weapons.
