'Make or break': What to know about US-Iran talks in Pakistan
When US Vice President JD Vance boarded his flight to Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday morning in Washington, DC, he struck a relatively upbeat, more conciliatory tone than his boss, President Donald Trump, ahead of the high-stakes ceasefire talks with Iran.
"We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it's going to be positive," Vance told reporters of the negotiations slated for Saturday morning and mediated by Pakistan, a friendly nation to both sides.
“As the president of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive."
In a series of posts on Truth Social on Friday, Trump declared that Iran has "no cards" and that its public relations strategy is better than its warfighting ability.
"The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!" he wrote.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif reminded everyone on Friday of the high-stakes nature of the talks, terming it a "make or break" moment.
'A major step up'
Iran is likely pleased that the man who is a hair's breadth away from the presidency is leading the delegation this time around.
It will still include special envoy for peace missions Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, but the breakdown of previous talks led to increased scrutiny of the duo, given their lack of technical expertise and experience relative to the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.
Kushner, in particular, does not even have an official role within the administration. He does, however, have significant financial interests across Israel and the Gulf region.
'It shows a lot of seriousness. It's a major step up'
- Negar Mortazavi, Center for International Policy
The head of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, may also join the negotiation. He was pictured in his uniform, alongside Witkoff and Kushner, in February in Oman. His unusual presence at diplomatic discussions was likely meant as a reminder to the Iranians about Trump's willingness to use military force.
"It shows a lot of seriousness," Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow with the Center for International Policy, told Middle East Eye on Friday about the vice president's leadership of the talks.
"It's a major step up. And on the Iranian side also, if the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, comes, that would be a very good match."
Ghalibaf is joining Araghchi for the talks, but before leaving Tehran on Friday, he posted on X that the US must first unblock Iranian assets before discussions can commence.
In total, those assets amount to well over $100bn across Iran's international bank accounts.
"Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations," he said. "These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin."
Procedure
Talks between the US and Iran have not just generally involved lower-ranking American officials, but they've also not been direct - at least not since the breakdown of the nuclear deal in 2018, after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew.
The mediating party has often had to shuttle messages between delegations in different rooms.
This time, however, there may be an opening for some face time, especially with the vice president in charge.
"Vance represents that the anti-war wing of the Republican Party [and] Maga," Mortazavi said, referring to Trump's Make America Great Again movement.
"I think in that sense, it's also a very symbolic message to send the anti-war person, as opposed to, for example, Marco Rubio, who is the secretary of state, but he comes from the more neocon, classic wing of the Republican Party, and he's always been very hawkish on Iran."
Speaking to Al Jazeera English on Friday, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, said "all options are open" for the manner in which the negotiations will be held.
"I believe it would not be good to have prerequisites or prejudgments or preemptions, but rather let the process flow in accordance with the comfort level of the two conflicting parties," he added.
However, the talks are also taking place with the backdrop of Trump's threat to go back to war, per his comments to The New York Post on Friday.
"We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made - even better than what we did previously, and we blew them apart," Trump said of US warships.
"If we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively."
Araghchi, however, had said earlier that the onus is on the US to guarantee a positive outcome to the talks by pulling its ally Israel back.
Within hours of the ceasefire's announcement on Tuesday, Israel killed more than 350 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 1,000.
Lebanon's Hezbollah is a critical partner to Iran, and likely the central sticking point in the talks, given Israel's long-held ambitions to eventually reoccupy southern Lebanon.
"The Iran-US Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the US must choose-ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both," Araghchi wrote on X on Wednesday.
"The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments."
Deliverables
Israel had no direct involvement in Tuesday's ceasefire agreement, and will not be represented in Islamabad on Saturday.
Washington is viewed as the singular channel to Israel.
"They're not interested in this resolution," Mortazavi told MEE of Israel. "And I think US and Israeli interests right now are diverging."
"Despite Iran saying that the regional cessation of hostilities was part of the agreed ceasefire, and Pakistan has reaffirmed that... this has been a pattern from Israel," she added.
"Right before the ceasefire or right after the ceasefire, they do an escalation, sometimes essentially in the form of a trap, to push the other side to violate it."
As a response, Iran has done little to change the status of the Strait of Hormuz, per the ceasefire deal, and per Trump's repeated demands.
"While the bombardment of Iran has paused for now, the underlying conditions that brought the region to the brink remain firmly in place," Ryan Costello, policy director with the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement on Friday.
Expectations for the talks, he said, should be "very low".
"If diplomats succeed in meeting in Islamabad to begin discussions on a broader peace, they will do so in spite of President Trump’s efforts to walk back the terms."
For Pakistan, which is not a particularly experienced mediator, getting the parties to simply continue talking will be its measure of success on Saturday.
"Diplomacy is a gradual process," Sheikh told Al Jazeera English.
"For as long as we have to facilitate, we cherish, we value, and we are grateful for the trust reposed in us, and as a repository of that trust, we would be willing to go the whole distance."
Not two days earlier, Pakistan's defence minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, took to X in a now-deleted post, calling Israel "cancerous" and "a curse for humanity".
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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