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Talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad moved quickly from indirect contacts to direct meetings and written exchanges on Saturday, signalling momentum but leaving the outcome an open question.
Negotiators spent hours at the table, paused, and resumed, with Iranian state media claiming “progress” even as the overall picture remains unclear and the gap between the two sides remains wide.
In the room, US Vice President JD Vance, alongside envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, faced Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Tehran said discussions involved “detailed expert and technical” work behind closed doors, while Washington has offered little on the substance.
The Strait of Hormuz remains among the main points of "serious disagreement", Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The aim of the talks is to turn a fragile ceasefire into something more durable, but the decades-long adversaries are pushing competing priorities, from sanctions relief and regional de-escalation to Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.
At some point, the direct talks were held in an unusual three-way format that included Pakistan’s army chief. The US and Iranian delegations had met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif earlier, marking the start of negotiations between.
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.”
Lebanon, assets and Hormuz
Tehran, however, entered the talks with a broader set of demands. Iranian officials say negotiations cannot succeed without guarantees tied to a ceasefire in Lebanon, where its ally Hezbollah remains engaged in conflict with Israel, as well as tangible progress on lifting US sanctions.
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. However, a US official denied that Washington has agreed to unfreeze any Iranian assets.
As talks progressed, US forces announced they had begun preparing to clear sea mines from the Strait of Hormuz. It was not immediately clear whether the move was co-ordinated with Iran or formed part of any emerging deal.
