US President Donald Trump is sending a delegation led by Vice-President JD Vance and other top officials to Islamabad for direct talks with Iran aimed at ending weeks of conflict in the West Asia region. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the negotiating team will include Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with the first round scheduled for Saturday morning.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed Tehran will attend the Islamabad talks following a telephone conversation with Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Iran’s delegation is expected to be led by Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a central figure in Tehran’s wartime leadership structure.
The negotiations follow a two-week ceasefire window announced by President Donald Trump yesterday after what the administration described as a decisive military campaign against Iran. Ms Leavitt said Iran’s ability to arm proxy groups in the region has been significantly curtailed following US and Israeli strikes that began on February 28.
Meanwhile, sporadic fighting continues in the region, particularly in Lebanon, where Israel is striking Hezbollah targets. Iran has claimed these attacks violate the ceasefire. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the world is seeing the massacres in Lebanon. He said that the ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has said that Israeli strikes yesterday killed 182 people, the highest single-day death toll in the Israel-Hezbollah war. Altogether, 1,739 people have been killed and 5,873 injured in Lebanon in just over five weeks since the outbreak of the war.
In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it supports Trump’s decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks but that it doesn’t include the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It said the ceasefire is subject to Iran immediately opening the Strait of Hormuz and stopping all attacks on the US, Israel and countries in the region.
United States Vice President JD Vance has warned Iran that it would be dumb to jeopardise its ceasefire with Washington over Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. In Hungary, he said it would be Iran’s “choice” to let negotiations “fall apart” over Lebanon.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he told the leaders of Iran and the United States that he hoped a ceasefire between them would be respected in Lebanon and across all areas of confrontation, as Israeli strikes continued to hit Beirut.
The strategic Strait of Hormuz remains a key point of tension. Iranian media said Tehran has largely blocked the passage, while the White House says it has observed an uptick of traffic in the strait today. The IRGC Navy announced alternative transit routes for ships to avoid sea mines after vowing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as part of the ceasefire negotiations.
