Vice President J D Vance on Friday warned Iran not to “play” the US as he headed overseas for negotiations aimed at ending the war. President Donald Trump has tasked the member of his inner circle who has seemed to be the most reluctant defender of the six-week-old conflict with Iran to now find a resolution and stave off the US president`s astonishing threat to wipe out its “whole civilisation”.
Vance, who has long been skeptical of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the prospect of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, set off Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we`re certainly willing to extend the open hand,” Vance told reporters before boarding Air Force Two to make his way to the talks in Pakistan.
But he added, “If they`re gonna try and play us, then they`re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.” Vance`s trip comes as a tenuous, temporary ceasefire appears to be on the precipice of collapsing. The chasm between Iran`s public demands and those from the US and its partner Israel seems irreconcilable. And in the US, where Vance might ask voters in two years` time to make him the next president, there is growing political and economic pressure to wrap it up.
As Vance made his way to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Iran`s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said in a social media post that a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, and the release of blocked Iranian assets “must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.” He did not elaborate further. Qalibaf and other senior Iranian officials arrived in Islamabad later on Friday ahead of Vance.
The Iranian delegation for the talks, which is slated to begin Saturday, also includes Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of the Supreme National Defence Council, Central Bank Governor Abdolnasser Hemmati, and several lawmakers. It was received at the airport by Pakistan`s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and other senior Pakistani government officials. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a televised address to his nation on Friday, described the talks as a “make-or-break moment” for the two sides.
Vance is joined by Trump`s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump`s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who took part in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators aimed at settling US concerns about Tehran`s nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes and its support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East before Trump and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.
The White House has provided scant detail about the format of the talks ` whether they will be direct or indirect ` and has not provided specific expectations for the meeting. But the arrival of Vance for negotiations marks a rare moment of high-level US government engagement with the Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the most direct contact had been when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in September 2013 called newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran`s nuclear programme.
Two sides face steep climb in making headway
Almost immediately after the White House and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire Tuesday evening, the sides found themselves at odds over the terms of the truce. Iran insisted that an end to the Israeli war in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump said the truce did not cover Lebanon, and the Israeli operations there continued.
The US, meanwhile, demanded that Iran make good on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic had closed the critical shipping waterway in response to Israel`s intensifying attacks against the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. “The Iranians don`t seem to realise they have no cards, other than a short-term extortion of the World by using International Waterways,” Trump posted on social media on Friday.
“The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” Iran`s effective shuttering of the waterway has had a major impact on the US and global economies. In the United States, consumer prices rose 3.3 per cent in March from a year earlier, the Labour Department reported Friday. The largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades spurred the sharp spike in inflation.
Still, Trump expressed confidence in an exchange with reporters on Friday evening about the US position going into the talks. He predicted that the strait will soon be reopened “with or without” Tehran`s cooperation. It`s the highest-stakes moment thus far for Vance, who spent much of last year as more of a background player in the Trump White House, especially as others like Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio took turns as ever-present advisers for the president.
“I wished him luck. He`s got a big thing,” Trump said of his parting message to Vance before he began his journey to Islamabad. Vance`s portfolio is fattening fast, first with a mission to root out fraud in government programs at home and now to help solve a US war in the Middle East, where complicated doesn`t even begin to describe things. Vance, who served in the Iraq War while in the Marines and spent two years as a US senator for Ohio and a little more than one as vice president, has little diplomatic experience.
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