Islamabad, Pakistan – With key differences in the Iranian and American positions seemingly intact, Pakistan is aiming for what officials describe as a realistic – if modest – outcome from the negotiations between the two warring nations set to commence in Islamabad on Saturday. The aim: to get the United States and Iranian negotiators to find enough common ground to continue talks. On Friday, US Vice President JD Vance left Washington for Islamabad, where he will lead the American team, which will also consist of President Donald Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
While Iran has not formally confirmed its representatives at the talks, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf are expected to lead Tehran’s team. These high-level talks follow days after the US and Iran agreed to a Pakistan-mediated two-week ceasefire, and will be held exactly six weeks after the US and Israel launched their war on Iran with the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28. Experts and sources close to the mediation effort said there was little expectation that a major breakthrough would be reached on Saturday.
But by setting a more realistic ceiling – an agreement in Islamabad to continue deeper negotiations aimed at finding a lasting peace deal – Pakistan is hopeful it can help build on a truce that led to a collective sigh of relief globally. We got them to sit at a table. Now it is for the parties to decide whether they are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach an eventual solution,” Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United Nations, told Al Jazeera.
Now, he added, it will aim to secure an agreement for the US and Iran to continue dialogue. The US and Iranian delegations will land at the Nur Khan airbase outside Islamabad and then drive to the Serena Hotel, where they will stay, and where the talks will be held. Though the two teams will be in the same hotel, they will not come face to face for the negotiations, officials said.
Instead, they will sit in two separate rooms, with Pakistani officials shuttling messages between them. In diplomatic jargon, such negotiations are known as proximity talks. Pakistan’s experience with such a dialogue is not new.
In 1988, Islamabad itself participated in the Geneva Accords negotiations on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, where UN-mediated indirect talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan produced a landmark agreement. Akram, who has represented Pakistan at the UN in Geneva from 2008 to 2015, said that history was relevant. Pakistan itself participated in one in Geneva in 1988 on the Afghan issue,” he told Al Jazeera.
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