High-stakes talks between the United States and Iran have ended without a deal, and Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has blamed the US for the failure of talks held in Islamabad, Pakistan, during a two-week ceasefire in their war. Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said on Sunday that his delegation raised “forward-looking” initiatives during the talks on Saturday but the US failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation. US Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation, said earlier that the talks ended without a deal.
The talks – the first direct engagement between the two countries at this level since the 1979 Iranian Revolution – exposed deep divisions on core issues, including Iran’s nuclear programme and the Strait of Hormuz, which in effect has been under Tehran’s control since the war began on February 28. The de facto blockade of the waterway, through which one-fifth of global crude oil supplies pass, has caused a global energy crisis and rattled stock markets globally. Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said the talks mediated by Pakistan, which went on for more than 21 hours, were “neither a breakthrough nor a breakdown”.
Here’s a look at what each side said and what the key sticking points between Tehran and Washington are: The US framed the lack of a breakthrough primarily around Iran’s alleged refusal to meet its core demand: a firm commitment not to develop nuclear weapons. The vice president did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz. During the negotiations, US President Donald Trump seemed to insert himself in the talks, saying a deal was not entirely necessary.
Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me because we’ve won,” he told reporters in Washington, DC. However, the fact that Trump sent Vance to Islamabad showed the US was taking these talks seriously, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said, reporting from Washington, DC. Those talks can continue remotely, and leaving those talks may simply be a hard stance,” the Al Jazeera correspondent added.
Iran downplayed expectations and blamed the US for making what it called unreasonable demands. He added that the two sides discussed a range of issues, including the “Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear issue, war reparations, the lifting of sanctions, and the complete end of the war against Iran”. Baghaei emphasised that the lack of a deal should not be seen as a failure of the broader process, saying, “No one had such an expectation.” According to the IRNA news agency, when asked whether diplomacy had ended, Baghaei said, “Diplomacy never ends.” Ghalibaf posted on X: “The US has come to understand Iran’s logic and principles, and now it must decide whether it is capable of gaining our trust.” Mohsen Farkhani from the University of Isfahan said Tehran entered the talks not for a breakthrough but to show the world that Washington was not serious.
Pakistan called for the ceasefire to continue while keeping diplomacy alive. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar stressed that it is “imperative” for both sides to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire, warning implicitly of the risks of renewed conflict if it collapses. Pakistan will continue to “play its role to facilitate engagement and dialogue between” Iran and the US “in the days to come”, he added.
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