Vice President of the United States JD Vance has warned Tehran not to “play” the U.S. as he departed for Islamabad for negotiations aimed at ending the war with Iran.
Vance, who has long been skeptical of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the prospect of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, sets off Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Talking to reporters before departure, Vance said he will lead the talks as per Donald Trump’s guidelines and hoped for a positive outcome.
It comes as a tenuous, temporary ceasefire appears to be on the precipice of collapsing. The chasm between Iran’s public demands and those from the U.S. and its partner Israel seem irreconcilable.
And in the U.S., where Vance might ask voters in two years’ time to make him the next president, there is growing political and economic pressure to wrap it up.
Vance is joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who took part in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators aimed at settling U.S. concerns about Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs and its support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East before Trump and Israel launched the Feb. 28 war against Iran.
The White House has provided scant detail about the format of the talks — whether they will be direct or indirect — and has not provided specific expectations for the meeting.
