ISLAMABAD: The US and Iran failed to reach an agreement to end their war despite marathon talks that concluded on Sunday here, jeopardising a fragile ceasefire.
Each side blamed the other for the failure of the 21-hour negotiations to end fighting that has killed thousands, roiled the global economy and sent oil prices soaring since it began more than six weeks ago.
Both the US and Iranian delegations have now left Islamabad to return home, Pakistani sources told Reuters.
The talks, after a ceasefire earlier in the week, were the first direct US-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement. Other Iranian media said there was agreement on a number of issues but that the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear programme were the main points of difference. Israeli security cabinet minister Zeev Elkin told Army Radio that more talks were still an option, but added: “The Iranians are playing with fire.”
In his brief press conference, Vance did not mention reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked since the war began.
Vance said he had spoken with President Donald Trump as many as a dozen times during the talks. But even as the negotiations continued, Trump said on Saturday that a deal was not entirely necessary.
“We’re negotiating. Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me, because we’ve won,” he told reporters.
Even as the talks were taking place, US ally Israel continued bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, insisting that that conflict was not part of the Iran-US ceasefire. Iran says the fighting in Lebanon must stop.
The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight into Sunday and black smoke could be seen rising in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sunday. In Israeli villages near the border, air raid sirens sounded, warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
Iranian Demands
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, as well as the release of its frozen assets abroad.
Tehran also wants to collect transit fees in the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite the differences in Islamabad, three supertankers fully laden with oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, in what appeared to be the first vessels to exit the Gulf since the ceasefire deal.
Hundreds of tankers are still stuck in the Gulf, waiting to exit during the two-week ceasefire period.
Trump’s stated goals have shifted, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme to ensure it cannot produce an atomic bomb.
Tehran has long denied seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
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