US and Iran fail to reach a deal after marathon talks in Pakistan

The United States and Iran have failed to reach a truce deal after high-stakes talks in the Pakistani capital, with US Vice President JD Vance saying Tehran has refused to accept Washington’s terms after 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad. He said Iran chose “not to accept our terms” at the talks, which began on Saturday, adding that the US needs to see a “fundamental commitment” from Tehran not to develop nuclear weapons. Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Washington, DC, said the fact that US President Donald Trump sent Vance showed the US was taking these talks seriously.

Those talks can continue remotely, and leaving those talks may simply be a hard stance,” the Al Jazeera correspondent said. Hendren said the US is demanding not just that Iran pledge it will not develop nuclear weapons, but also that it will not even try to access those tools, adding that such gaps made talks in the mid-2010s take years to negotiate. Iran and the US ended up achieving a 2015 nuclear accord under then-US President Barack Obama, which Trump walked away from three years later.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday that no one had expected the talks with the US to reach an agreement in one day. No one had such an expectation,” ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB. He said Tehran was “confident that contacts between us and Pakistan as well as our other friends in the region will continue”.

Iran’s Parliament ⁠Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the leader of Tehran’s delegation in Islamabad, said it raised “forward-looking” initiatives, but the US failed to gain the ‌trust of his delegation in the talks. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the Iranian side did not share information on the technicalities or other details pertaining to the points of controversy in the talks. Asadi said people on the streets of Tehran are not hopeful about a two-week ceasefire that began on Wednesday and the diplomatic engagement between the sides.

As well as the release of frozen assets abroad, Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region, including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials. However, US ally Israel has refused to stop its offensive against the Hezbollah group in Lebanon. Tehran said the ceasefire agreed last week included the war in Lebanon, but the US and Israel have both rejected that.

An initial post by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announcing the ceasefire included Lebanon in it. As the talks were under way in Islamabad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s military campaign against Iran was not over. Netanyahu also said Israel is seeking a deal with Lebanon.