Live updates: Follow the latest news on the Iran war
The US and Iranian delegations in Islamabad met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, according to state media and an official statement, marking the start of indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
Iran's delegation is led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and includes Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, while the US team is led by Vice President JD Vance, who is joined by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Saturday's high-stakes talks are aimed at testing whether a fragile, Pakistan-brokered ceasefire can be turned into a pathway out of a six-week war.
Even as the negotiations start, the diplomatic gap remains wide. Washington has framed the talks around a narrow objective: ensuring Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. President Donald Trump has insisted Tehran has "no cards" beyond disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, while signalling that any deal would centre on nuclear restrictions rather than broader regional issues.
He claimed that regime change had never been a condition for a deal, and also said the Strait of Hormuz would “open up automatically” once an agreement is reached. “If we just left, the strait’s going to – otherwise they make no money,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews as he departed for Charlottesville, Virginia. “What we have is no nuclear weapon, but we’ll open the strait anyway. Don’t forget, we don’t use the strait – other countries do.”
Tehran, however, is entering the talks with a broader set of demands. Iranian officials say negotiations cannot begin without guarantees tied to Lebanon, where its ally Hezbollah remains engaged in conflict with Israel, as well as tangible progress on lifting US sanctions. State-linked media have suggested that talks will proceed only if these preconditions are accepted.
Lebanon and frozen assets
Hours before the talks began, Israeli media reported that the government agreed to hold back from launching strikes on Beirut and its southern suburbs, instead co-ordinating any such attacks with Washington through a formal mechanism.
Israeli forces will be refraining from initiating strikes in those areas unless there is what officials describe as a “clear operational necessity”, such as high-value intelligence indicating preparations for long-range attacks or the transfer of weapons beyond Lebanon, said the reports.
In such cases, any strike would be carried out in co-ordination with the US, under a framework similar to the November 2024 ceasefire arrangements, which Israel broke hundreds of times.
According to Israeli media, the restraint is partly driven by US efforts to prevent further escalation at a sensitive diplomatic moment, as Washington engages in crucial talks with Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer. Tehran has signalled it will not attend the Islamabad negotiations on Saturday unless there is an agreement regarding Lebanon.
Meanwhile, a senior Iranian source told Reuters that the US had agreed to release Iranian frozen assets held in Qatar and other foreign banks, welcoming the move as a sign of "seriousness" in reaching a deal with Washington in talks in Islamabad.
The source, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, said unfreezing the assets was "directly linked to ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz", which is expected to be a key issue in the talks.
However, a US official denied that the US has agreed to unfreeze any Iranian assets.
