U.S. President Donald Trump said that U.S. negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday for talks with Iran, lifting hopes of extending a ceasefire set to expire this week even as Washington and Tehran remain locked in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, the Associated Press reported.
Iranian officials said earlier on Sunday that they remained open to negotiation, but held firm that ships wouldn’t pass the Strait of Hormuz while the U.S. blockade remained in effect.
There is currently no decision by Iran to send a negotiating delegation to Pakistan “as long as there is a naval blockade,” Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday, citing its reporter.
“It is impossible for others to pass through the Strait of Hormuz while we cannot,” Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf said in an interview aired on state television late Saturday.
In his post announcing another round of talks, Trump accused Iran of violating the ceasefire by firing at ships passing the strait and threatened to destroy civilian infrastructure in Iran, if it doesn’t take the deal that the U.S. is offering.
“If they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump wrote.
He didn’t detail which officials that the U.S. would be sending to a second round of in-person talks with Iran is Islamabad. The White House and office of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who led the first round of talks, didn’t immediately respond to messages Sunday morning.
In the meantime, it remained unclear whether either side had shifted their stances on unresolved issues that derailed the last round of negotiations, including Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Qalibaf, who is Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, said “there will be no retreat in the field of diplomacy,” acknowledging that the gap between the two sides remained wide.
In parallel, Pakistani authorities began tightening security in the capital, Islamabad. A regional official involved in the mediation efforts said that mediators were finalizing the preparations and that U.S. advance security teams were already on the ground. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the preparations with the media.
