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.
“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance, the head of the US delegation, told reporters on Sunday, shortly before he left Islamabad after the highest-level meeting between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
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.
“We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said during a ceasefire in the six-week US-Israeli war on Iran.
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.
“The fact that Vance left doesn’t necessarily mean that the talks are over,” he said, adding that the main sticking points seem to be the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran continues to essentially control, and the gaps in the nuclear issue.
“The US has been negotiating with Iran over time. 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.
“Naturally, from the beginning, we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. 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.
“The US has understood Iran’s logic and principles, and it’s time for them to decide whether they can earn our trust or not,” Ghalibaf said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has called on the US and Iran to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire and continue efforts to achieve a durable peace.
“On behalf of Pakistan, I would like to express gratitude to the two sides for appreciating Pakistan’s efforts to achieve a ceasefire and its mediator role. We hope that the two sides continue with a positive spirit to achieve durable peace and prosperity for the entire region and beyond,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said.
“There is a sea of mistrust that they are trying to build bridges over, and statements like this and leaving the negotiations with an ultimatum are not going to help bridge those divides,” he said.
The US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, and it quickly expanded to the wider Middle East region as Tehran carried out retaliatory attacks on Israel and neighbouring Gulf countries where US troops and assets are located. More than 2,000 people have been killed, and military and civilian areas damaged and destroyed in the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
The war began despite several rounds of talks between Washington and Tehran. Oman, the mediator, said the war started although a deal was “within reach”.
