US President Donald Trump says 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 prospect of talks on the horizon, which Iran did not immediately confirm, came as ships remained unable to transit the critical waterway amid threats from Iran and a US blockade on ships heading to and from Iranian ports.
Iranian officials said earlier on Sunday that they remained open to negotiation, but held firm that ships wouldn’t pass the strait while the US blockade remained in effect.
“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 on Saturday (Sunday AEST).
In his post announcing official travel for 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 US 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 US would be sending to a second round of in-person talks with Iran in Islamabad. The White House and office of US Vice President JD Vance, who led the first round of talks, didn’t immediately respond to messages Sunday morning.
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, its regional proxies and control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Qalibaf, who is Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the United States, said before Trump’s latest comments that Iran still was seeking peace despite the blockade and deep-seated distrust of Washington.
“There will be no retreat in the field of diplomacy,” he said, acknowledging that the gap between the two sides remained wide.
Iran had announced the strait’s reopening after a 10-day truce between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon took hold on Friday. But after Trump said that the US blockade of Iran’s ports “will remain in full force” until Tehran reaches a deal with the United States, Iran said it would continue enforcing its restrictions in the strait.
After a brief uptick in transit attempts on Saturday, vessels in the Persian Gulf held their positions, wary after two India-flagged ships were fired on mid-transit and forced to turn around. Their retreat returned the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes, to its pre-ceasefire status quo, threatening to deepen the global energy crisis and push the parties toward renewed conflict as the war entered its eighth week.
With days until the ceasefire in place between the US and Iran runs out, Iran on Saturday said it had received new proposals from the United States, and Pakistani mediators were working to arrange another round of direct negotiations in the coming days.
Pakistani authorities began tightening security in the capital, Islamabad. A regional official involved in the mediation efforts said that mediators were finalising the preparations and that US advance security teams were already on the ground. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to discuss the preparations with the media.
For the Islamic Republic, the strait’s closure — imposed after the US and Israel launched the Iran war on February 28 during talks over Tehran’s nuclear program — is perhaps its most powerful weapon, threatening the world economy and inflicting political pain on Trump. For the United States, the blockade squeezes Iran’s already weakened economy and pressures its government by denying it long-term cash flow.
Though the ceasefire has held, the standoff in the strait threatens to plunge the region back into a war that has killed at least 3000 people in Iran, more than 2290 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. 15 Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 US service members throughout the region have been killed.
Reopening hopes sink as ships come under fire
Revolutionary Guard gunboats opened fire on a tanker and a projectile hit a container vessel, damaging some containers, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said on Sunday.
India’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Iran’s ambassador over the “serious incident” of firing on two India-flagged merchant ships, especially after Iran earlier let several India-bound ships through.
“Americans are risking the international community, risking the global economy through these, I can say, miscalculations,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told The Associated Press, adding that the US is “risking the whole ceasefire package”.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council issued a statement calling the blockade a violation of the ceasefire and said Iran would prevent “any conditional and limited reopening” of the strait. The council has recently acted as Iran’s de facto top decision-making body.
Since most supplies to US military bases in the Gulf region come through the strait, “Iran is determined to maintain oversight and control more than traffic through the strait until the war fully ends,” the council said. That means Iran-designated routes, payment of fees and issuance of transit certificates.