Iran delegation has arrived in Islamabad ahead of Vance 2026.04.11
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Iran’s negotiating team arrived in Islamabad on Friday for peace talks with the United States, even as Tehran insisted on measures it said needed to be addressed first, throwing last-minute doubt over the meetings scheduled in Pakistan.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the six-week war on Tuesday, just hours before a deadline after which the U.S. president had threatened to destroy Iran’s civilization.
The ceasefire has halted U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
But it has not ended Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or calmed a parallel war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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Iran’s parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said on X that Washington had previously agreed to unblock Iranian assets and to a ceasefire in Lebanon, and added that talks would not start until those pledges are fulfilled.
Israel and the U.S. have said the campaign against militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon is not part of the agreed ceasefire.
The office of the Lebanese presidency issued a statement saying Lebanon and Israel held a telephone call between their ambassadors in Washington on Friday. It said the call was part of efforts to secure a ceasefire and launch negotiations. The two sides agreed to hold a first meeting on Tuesday at the U.S. State Department under U.S. mediation.
The Iranian delegation, led by Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araqhchi, arrived in Islamabad, the nation’s foreign ministry said. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the group consists of around 70 members, including technical specialists in economic, security and political fields as well as media personnel and support staff, reflecting what it described as the high sensitivity of the negotiations.
Speaking from Islamabad, Qalibaf said Tehran had goodwill toward negotiations but no trust in the United States, adding that Iran was ready to reach a deal if Washington offered what he described as a genuine agreement and granted Iran its rights, Iranian state media reported.
Trump claims Iran has ‘no cards’
While there was no immediate comment from the White House, Trump said in a social media post that the only reason the Iranians were alive was to negotiate a deal.
“The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” he said.
U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, who will lead the U.S. delegation, said he expected a positive outcome as he headed to Pakistan, but added: “If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, says he believes the Iranians want Vance in the room, to ensure they are getting their message through to Trump.
- Trump casts doubt on ceasefire as Iran maintains chokehold on Strait of Hormuz
- Trump and Iran remain far apart on peace terms. Here are the biggest gaps
“I think the level of participation in these talks is the highest that the Trump administration and Iran have had before,” he told CBC’s Front Burner podcast.
Nasr says Iran wanted a level of access above U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kusher, the president’s son-in-law, who are also part of the talks in Islamabad, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this week.
Nasr said it appears to be Tehran’s perspective that “they didn’t have grasp of the issues” and “perhaps misrepresented” to the White House what had been achieved in a prior round of talks in Geneva.
‘A make-or-break phase’: Pakistan PM
Iran has been unable to obtain tens of billions of dollars of its assets in foreign banks, mainly from exports of oil and gas, due to U.S. sanctions on its banking and energy sectors.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a national address on Friday night, laid out the stakes of the talks.
“The permanent ceasefire is the next difficult phase, which is to resolve the complicated issues through negotiation. This, as called in English, is a make-or-break phase,” Sharif said.
The hard line taken by Iran’s leaders ahead of the negotiations followed a defiant message from its new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday.
- Strikes continue across Gulf countries amid confusion over status of Strait of Hormuz
- Carney urges ‘all parties’ in Iran war not to target civilian infrastructure amid Trump threats
Khamenei, yet to be seen in public since taking over from his father, who was killed on the war’s first day, said Iran would demand compensation for all wartime damage.
“We will certainly not leave unpunished the criminal aggressors who attacked our country,” he said.
Not all of Trump’s stated aims achieved
Although Trump has declared victory and degraded Iran’s military capabilities, the war has not achieved many of the aims he set out at the start: to deprive Iran of the ability to strike its neighbours, dismantle its nuclear program, and make it easier for its people to overthrow their government.
Iran still possesses missiles and drones capable of hitting its neighbours and a stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of uranium enriched near the level needed to make a bomb. Its clerical rulers, who faced a popular uprising just months ago, withstood the onslaught with no sign of organized opposition.
Tehran’s agenda at the talks includes major new concessions, including the end of sanctions that crippled its economy for years, and acknowledgment of its authority over the strait, where it aims to collect transit fees and control access in what would amount to a huge shift in regional power.
Iran’s ships were sailing through the strait unimpeded on Friday, while those of other countries remained hemmed inside.
Disruption to energy supplies has fed inflation and slowed the global economy, with an impact expected to last for months even if negotiators succeed in reopening the strait.