Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration’s representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan’s capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were “inches away” from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict.
“In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with US in good faith to end war,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media. “But when just inches away from ‘Islamabad [Memorandum of Understanding],’ we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade. Zero lessons earned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”
The failed weekend talks marked the second time since February that US negotiators have been accused of sabotaging formal negotiations despite participants believing a deal was within reach. Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the US and Israel started bombing Iran on February 28 that “we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal.”
The Trump administration’s negotiating team, which consisted principally of Vice President JD Vance and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly set down numerous “red lines” during the Islamabad talks this past weekend, including demanding that Iran end all uranium enrichment – which Iran has a right to conduct under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – and dismantle its major nuclear energy facilities.
“We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms,” Vance told reporters on Sunday. “I think that we were quite flexible.”
US President Donald Trump claimed on social media that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.”
Iran’s top negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wrote following the talks that “due to the experiences of the two previous wars, we have no trust in the opposing side.”
After the single day of talks faltered, Trump announced a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, an illegal act of war that critics warned could plunge the two sides into a deeper conflict.
“It is concerning that Vance already suggests that the US has put forward a final and best offer, suggesting that the US is still trying to dictate terms rather than negotiate a better future,” said Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council. “We urge President Trump to walk back his blockade threat and for the US and Iran to reengage and consider implementing practical steps where there is agreement to lower tensions and build on this fragile pause to the war.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Trump and his advisers “are looking at resuming limited military strikes in Iran” on top of the naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which the president said is set to begin at 10 am ET.
“Trump could also resume a full-fledged bombing campaign,” the Journal noted—though unnamed officials said that option was “less likely.”
US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in an interview on Sunday that American lawmakers “need to do whatever we can to get [Trump] out” of office, calling the president’s war on Iran “illegal,” “a war crime,” “immoral,” and disastrous for the American public.
“Impeachment, invoke the 25th Amendment, push for him to resign, whatever it is,” Jayapal told MS NOW. “This is so grave of a situation.”