{"id":49061,"date":"2026-04-25T06:04:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=49061"},"modified":"2026-04-25T06:04:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T06:04:30","slug":"us-negotiators-to-go-to-islamabad-but-iran-says-no-direct-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=49061","title":{"rendered":"US negotiators to go to Islamabad, but Iran says no direct talks"},"content":{"rendered":"
US\u00a0negotiators are scheduled to leave for Pakistan on Saturday, but \u200bIran said its officials did not plan to meet the Americans to discuss ending the war that has killed thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians\u00a0and \u200croiled global markets.<\/p>\n

US President\u00a0Donald Trump’s\u00a0special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are due to\u00a0depart\u00a0on Saturday morning for talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the White House said.<\/p>\n

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that Iran had a chance to make a\u00a0“good deal”\u00a0with the United States.<\/p>\n

“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely,” \u200bhe said. “All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways.”<\/p>\n

Trump claims Iran planning to make offer<\/p>\n

Araghchi \u200barrived in the capital, Islamabad, on Friday. But an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson posted on X that Iranian officials did \u2060not plan to meet with US\u00a0representatives and that Tehran’s concerns would be conveyed to mediator Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Read:\u00a0Iran ‘surprise’ resurrects faltering peace process<\/p>\n

The White House did not immediately respond to a \u200brequest for comment on the Iranian statement.<\/p>\n

Washington is at a costly impasse with Tehran\u00a0as Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries \u200bone-fifth of global oil shipments, while the US\u00a0blocks Iran’s oil exports. The US-Israeli war on Iran, entering its ninth week, has pushed energy prices to multi-year highs, stoking inflation and darkening global growth prospects.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0told Reuters on Friday that Iran planned to\u00a0make an offer\u00a0aimed at satisfying US\u00a0demands but that he did not know what the offer entailed. He declined \u200bto say who Washington was negotiating with, “but we’re dealing with the people that are in charge now”.<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the US\u00a0\u200bhad seen some progress from the Iranian side in recent days and hoped more would come this weekend, while Vice President JD Vance was ready to travel to Pakistan \u200cas well.<\/p>\n

Vance, \u2060Witkoff, Kushner and Araqchi, as well as the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, took part in\u00a0inconclusive talks\u00a0in Islamabad two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Araghchi, who posted on X that he would also be visiting Pakistan, Oman and Russia, met Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Friday at the Serena Hotel, where the earlier talks were held, while a US\u00a0logistics and security team was in place in Islamabad, according to Pakistani sources.<\/p>\n

Ceasefires in place, few ships crossing Hormuz<\/p>\n

Trump unilaterally \u200bextended a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday \u200bto allow more time for \u2060the negotiators to reconvene.<\/p>\n

Oil prices surged this week, with Brent crude futures soaring 16%, on uncertainty over the fate of the peace talks and as violence flared in the region.<\/p>\n

Shipping data on Friday showed that five ships had\u00a0crossed the Strait \u200bof Hormuz\u00a0in the previous 24 hours, compared to around 130 a day before the war that the US\u00a0\u200band Israel launched \u2060on February 28. The ships included an Iranian oil-products tanker, but none of the vast crude-carrying supertankers that normally feed global energy markets.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Israel and Lebanon\u00a0extended their ceasefire\u00a0for three weeks at a White House meeting brokered by Trump, but there was little sign of an end to the fighting in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Israel has been attacking Lebanese territory for the past year, and\u00a0invaded \u2060its northern \u200bneighbour last month to root out Iran’s Hezbollah allies after the militant group fired across \u200bthe border. Tehran says a ceasefire in Lebanon\u00a0is a precondition for talks.<\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0Hezbollah defiant in face of ceasefire extension<\/p>\n

Lebanese authorities reported an Israeli strike killed six people, and Hezbollah downed an Israeli drone. Israel’s military said it \u200bhad killed six armed Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon, in addition to the thousand-plus civilians and multiple journalists that Israel has killed or otherwise targeted.<\/p>\n

WIth input from Web Desk.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US\u00a0negotiators are scheduled to leave for Pakistan on Saturday, but \u200bIran said its officials did not plan to meet the Americans to discuss ending the war that has killed thousands of Iranian and Lebanese civilians\u00a0and \u200croiled global markets. US President\u00a0Donald Trump’s\u00a0special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are due to\u00a0depart\u00a0on Saturday morning for talks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}