Islamabad, Pakistan – Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, is expected to fly into Pakistan’s capital on Friday night with a small delegation, in what officials said was a key step towards  the resumption of direct talks with the United States aimed at ending their war.

Senior government officials in Islamabad confirmed the development to Al Jazeera, soon after a series of phone calls between Araghchi and Pakistani leaders on Friday.

For the moment, the Iranian state news agency IRNA said Araghchi’s visit to Pakistan was bilateral in nature — to speak with Pakistani officials, rather than for talks right away with the US. Araghchi, IRNA said, would travel to Moscow and Muscat after Islamabad.

Still, one Pakistani official said there was now a “high likelihood of a breakthrough” between the US and Iran, after days of escalating brinkmanship and rising tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.

A US delegation led by Vice President JD Vance was expected to arrive in Islamabad at the start of the week for talks, but Iran then said it was not prepared to return for talks, citing the naval blockade of its ports. Donald Trump enforced the blockade on April 13, two days after the first round of negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad ended inconclusively.

Since then, the prospects of further talks have been in limbo – with Iran insisting that the US needed to lift the blockade before it would return. Trump has so far refused to lift the blockade – even after Araghchi said that Iran would reopen the strait, which it had effectively blocked for most ships since early March.

Against the backdrop of that standoff, tensions have soared in recent days in the strait, where the US first captured an Iranian-flagged ship, only for Iran to also capture two ships and fire at a third.

By the middle of the week, it was uncertain whether the second round of US-Iran talks would happen.

That dynamic changed on Friday morning.

Flurry of calls

Araghchi spoke by phone with Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, on Friday morning.

Dar underscored the importance of sustained dialogue, while Araghchi appreciated Pakistan’s “consistent and constructive facilitation role”, according to Pakistan’s foreign ministry.

Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported a separate call between Araghchi and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, though Pakistani authorities neither confirmed nor denied it.

So far, the US has not confirmed whether and when the Trump administration will send a delegation to meet Araghchi and his team, or who it will be. Vance was joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in the April 11 talks in Islamabad.

But Iran’s delegation in those talks was led by parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, widely seen as closer to the influential Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) than Araghchi and Iran’s political leadership under President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Though talks initially planned for the start of the week were postponed, the US remains prepared to attend the second round of talks, say officials.

At least nine US aircraft have arrived in the city this week, carrying communications equipment, vehicles, security staff and technical personnel in preparation for the dialogue, whenever it happens.

It is unclear whether Iran’s apparent willingness to re-engage in talks is the result of economic pressure from the US naval blockade – which has stopped Iranian tankers from exporting to Asian economies – or the outcome of back-channel talks that have yielded a meaningful breakthrough.

Iran’s nuclear programme, US sanctions and the future of the Strait of Hormuz are key sticking points that in recent days have threatened to rupture Pakistan’s mediation efforts.

For the residents of Pakistan’s capital, the equation is simpler – if frustrating: They want the talks to be over and done with as soon as possible, because of the disruption to their lives and the limbo over whether negotiations would be held or not.

‘It is like living in purgatory’

Maheen Saleem Farooqi starts each morning the same way these days. She checks her phone before getting out of bed. Not for news, but for instructions: whether her office has changed plans, whether her children’s school has gone online, whether the road she uses to get to the bakery is open or sealed behind another security cordon.

“Your entire day is held upright by a carefully planned structure,” the 41-year-old consultant and mother of two told Al Jazeera. “Recalibrating it due to any level of uncertainty is tantamount to chaos. These past few weeks have been non-stop recalibrating”.

Ahead of the expected second round of talks early this week, authorities severely curtailed movement within the capital. The negotiations are expected to be at the Serena hotel, where the first round of talks was held inside the high-security Red Zone.

Even though Iran appeared to walk away from talks before showing willingness to negotiate on Friday, the security restrictions remained throughout the week.

Raja Talha Sarfraz, a 26-year-old advocate at the Islamabad High Court, has not appeared before a bench in over a week.

The court, inside the Red Zone, has been sealed since last Thursday. Fridays are already a day off under government fuel austerity measures, leaving a full week without a single working court day and no indication of when proceedings will resume.

For Sarfraz, the disruption has been particularly acute. One of his clients, convicted and sentenced to death, had an appeal listed after a ten-month wait.

The court was closed when the date arrived. The client has been in jail for four years.

Another client’s appeal, listed for Wednesday for the first time since September 2025, also went unheard. Sarfraz does not know when it will be rescheduled.

“My second client has been in jail since 2017,” he said. “Before September, there were four instances when the appeals were put to the roster but were cancelled for various reasons, and now this”.

Sarfraz also teaches law, but his university lectures have been moved online, an arrangement he finds inadequate. An exam he was due to invigilate has been postponed.

Living in Islamabad’s suburbs, he has also felt the impact of road closures, choking supply chains into the city since April 19, making even routine grocery runs unreliable.

With courts closed and classes confined to a screen, he has largely stayed home, relying on whatever supplies were available. “Life is in a limbo,” he said. “It is like living in purgatory, not knowing when it will end”.

Across Islamabad and neighbouring Rawalpindi, that sense of suspension has settled into daily life.

In residential areas near Nur Khan Airbase, several roads have been sealed since April 19. The airport is where major foreign dignitaries land when they visit Islamabad.

The wider city reflects the same strain. The Blue Area, usually Islamabad’s commercial hub, has seen subdued activity throughout the week.

Islamabad is no stranger to disruption. The city has endured attacks by violent groups, political protests and visits by heads of state, each bringing road closures and cancelled routines.

What has worn residents down this time is the scale and repetition.

The first wave of restrictions came in early April for the initial round of talks, and some measures were never fully lifted before the next phase of uncertainty began.

‘Things will get worse before they get better’

Pakistan has found itself at the centre of one of the most consequential diplomatic efforts in recent years.

Hosting talks between Washington and Tehran carries weight for the country’s global standing and its relationships with creditors and investors.

But for residents, the cost of sustaining that role is becoming harder to ignore.

Pakistan remains under a $7bn International Monetary Fund programme. Petrol prices have risen by at least 14 percent, and rolling blackouts have returned. After years of economic strain, many are now confronting yet another layer of disruption.

For Farooqi, the uncertainty operates on multiple levels. There is a larger fear of a war that has unsettled the global economy since February.

Then there is the smaller, everyday version: whether the bakery route will be open, whether school will switch online with little notice, whether plans made the night before will hold.

“Every night was an exercise in checking emails and messages to see if anything had changed, if roads would be open, if the government had announced anything, if anyone knew anything new,” she said.

“We literally had a moment where my daughter’s school announced it would be physical, and then 30 minutes later, promptly recanted and went online, because there is never any clarity on what is happening,” Farooqi added.

She said she has tried to hold her routine together, explaining to her children why their school schedule keeps shifting, sometimes within the same morning.

“Sometimes just the simple act of being able to concentrate on your work is overshadowed by the reality of our times,” she said.

“Honestly, I can’t see things getting better anytime soon. If anything, it seems more likely that things will get a lot worse before they get better.”