US and Iran fail to reach deal after talks in Pakistan
US and Iran fail to reach deal after talks in Pakistan
The United States and Iran have failed to reach a deal after high-stakes talks in the Pakistani capital, with Vice President JD Vance saying Tehran refused to accept Washington’s terms after 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad.
“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance, the head of the US delegation, told reporters shortly before he left Islamabad after the highest-level meeting between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
He said Iran chose “not to accept our terms”, adding that the US needs to see a “fundamental commitment” from Tehran not to develop nuclear weapons.
“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Washington, DC, said the fact that President Donald Trump sent Vance showed the US was taking these talks seriously.
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“The fact that Vance left doesn’t necessarily mean that the talks are over,” he said, adding that the main sticking points seem to be the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran continues to control, and the gaps in the nuclear issue.
“The US has been negotiating with Iran over time; those talks can continue remotely, and leaving those talks may simply be a hard stance,” the Al Jazeera correspondent added.
Hendren said the US is demanding not just that Iran pledge that it will not develop nuclear weapons, but also that it will not even try to access those tools, adding that such gaps made the talks in the mid-2010s take years to negotiate.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday that no one had expected the talks with the US to reach an agreement in a single session.
“Naturally, from the beginning, we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. No one had such an expectation,” ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.
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He said Tehran was “confident that contacts between us and Pakistan, as well as our other friends in the region, will continue”.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has called on the US and Iran to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire and continue efforts to achieve a durable peace.
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