“Fifteen hours and counting,” a senior White House official said as US and Iranian negotiators stayed at the table in Islamabad into the early hours. It went another six. Then Vice President JD Vance announced there was no deal.
Vance had led the American delegation through 21 hours of talks hosted by Pakistan, and he said the two sides had failed to find an agreement to end the war. “We’ve made very clear what our red lines are, what things we’re willing to accommodate them on, and what things we’re not willing to accommodate them on,” he told reporters. The Iranians, he suggested, “may have chosen not to accept our terms.”
Vance: the offer stands
The US side was in “constant communication” with President Donald Trump during the talks, Vance said, and Trump told him to act in good faith and make his best effort to get a deal. “We did that, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to make any headway.”
The main sticking point was nuclear. Washington needs a firmer commitment that Iran will not build a weapon, Vance said. “The simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven’t seen that yet. We hope that we will.”
He described the final US position as a “very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer.” Then, he said, “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.” Afterward he boarded Air Force Two and left Pakistan.
Tehran’s account
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB blamed “excessive demands” by America. On Telegram it said the sides had found no common ground on several key matters, including the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s development of nuclear technology.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei struck a different note. The talks took place “after 40 days of imposed war, in an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion,” he told the Iranian outlet SNN, so no one expected a deal from one meeting. Some common ground was found, he said, but “on two, three key topics there were significant differences.” It was the longest single negotiating session with the US in the past year, by his account, and it covered new subjects such as Hormuz and regional issues.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, according to the semi-official Mehr agency, named Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon as a main source of tension. He said the strikes amounted to war crimes because they allegedly hit civilian sites, a nursery among them, and said the outcome in Islamabad depended on the integrity of the US side.
Pakistan keeps the door open
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar called the session intense and constructive in a post on X. “It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to ceasefire,” he said, adding that Pakistan “will continue to play its role to facilitate engagement and dialogue” between the two countries.
Trump, speaking at the White House, said he was indifferent to the result. “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” he said.
