There is relief in America and world over that US President Donald Trump, the First Lady, the Vice President and Cabinet Members are safe after a shooting incident at a Hotel in Washington DC where the White House Correspondents Dinner was set to begin.
A 31-year old male described by Trump as a “very sick person”, “lone wolf” and “thug” who had attacked the Constitution was taken down by the Secret Service and is now in custody. But not before some very anxious moments. The incident reminded many of what had happened some 45 years ago at the same location when a lone gunman fired shots and injured the late President Ronald Reagan. And Trump was himself the target of an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania at the peak of campaigning in 2024.
Thousands of miles away in Pakistan, a political drama with deep implications for the security of the Middle East and elsewhere appears to be developing with Iran indicating its unwillingness to meet the negotiating team from Washington.
Vice President JD Vance had already put his trip on hold, only for Trump to announce later that he had instructed his top advisors Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner against travelling for nothing. “We’re not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time going back and forth to be giving a document that was not good enough, and so we’ll deal by telephone, and they can call us anytime they want,” Trump said adding on Truth Social “We have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” And minutes after the Pakistan trip was called off Trump said that he had heard back from Teheran with a “much better offer”. But no details have been released.
3-way dialogue
Iran had made it known that it was not for direct negotiations with the US and preferred a three-way dialogue through Pakistan arguing that it will not enter into “forced negotiations”. The President of Iran had apparently told Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that Washington was undermining trust and complicating the path to dialogue; and that progress would be difficult unless “hostile actions and operational pressures” are halted.
Teheran wants the US to remove the “operational obstacles including the blockade” of ships to and from Iranian ports. An agency report says that Teheran’s reservations and demands have been conveyed to Pakistan by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi prior to his leaving Islamabad.
Stumbling blocks
Without a doubt the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and nuclear weapons programme of Iran are the two major stumbling blocks. One assessment has been that crippling the flow of inbound and outbound tankers will be devastating for the Iranian economy even if it may weather the crisis for the short term.
Data seen in the media last week has only five ships — none of them super tankers carrying crude — have crossed the Hormuz in a 24-hour period as opposed to about 130 per day prior to start of hostilities on February 28. On the nuclear programme US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth remarked, “Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely. All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways”.
And in the midst of all the back-and-forth, there have been questions of whether to deal with the leadership at all in Tehran, some saying that a power struggle is going on with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) calling the shots.
“Iran is having a very hard time figuring out who their leader is! They just don’t know! The infighting is between the ‘Hardliners’, who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates’, who are not very moderate at all,” Trump wrote in a post adding “… we’re dealing with the people that are in charge now”.
The writer is a senior journalist who has reported from Washington DC on North America and the UN
Published on April 28, 2026