ISLAMABAD — U.S. envoys are expected to travel to Pakistan on Saturday in a new bid to salvage ceasefire talks with Tehran, even as Iran’s top diplomat arrived in Islamabad and ruled out direct negotiations with U.S. representatives.
The latest effort to broker a deal in Islamabad comes as an indefinite ceasefire has paused most fighting, but the economic fallout is still mounting with global energy shipments disrupted by the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Officials have not specified when President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are expected to lead the U.S. negotiation team, are due to arrive. The White House declined to comment on Saturday.
On Saturday, Iran resumed commercial flights from Tehran’s international airport for the first time since the conflict with the U.S. and Israel began about two months ago. Flights were scheduled to depart for Istanbul, Oman’s capital of Muscat and the Saudi city of Medina, according to Iran’s state-run television. Iran partly reopened its airspace earlier this month due to the ceasefire.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi meanwhile met with the Pakistan military’s chief of staff and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Araghchi wrote on Telegram that they spoke about regional developments, including Iran’s red lines for negotiations. Araghchi didn’t offer further details, but said Tehran would continue engaging with Pakistan’s mediation efforts “until a result is achieved.”
Pakistan works to get the US and Iran back to the negotiating table
Islamabad, where weeklong security restrictions have disrupted daily life in the capital, was in near-lockdown early Saturday ahead of the expected talks. Residents struggled to commute even short distances due to the now routine checkpoints, road closures and diversions.
The usually busy arteries leading to the airport and the heavily fortified Red Zone were largely deserted Saturday, with movement tightly restricted. Security forces — including troops, paramilitary commandos and police — maintained a strong presence at key intersections, especially near the airport, while helicopters circled overhead.
Pakistan has been trying to get U.S. and Iranian officials back to the table since Trump this week announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire, honoring Islamabad’s request for more diplomatic outreach.
The White House said Friday that Trump was sending Witkoff and Kushner to meet with Araghchi. But shortly after Iran’s top diplomat arrived in Islamabad, his ministry said any talks would be indirect and that Pakistani officials would convey messages between the two sides.
Araghchi and Trump’s envoys held hours of indirect talks in Geneva on Feb. 27 over Tehran’s nuclear program, but walked away without a deal. The next day, Israel and the United States started the war against Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Friday that Witkoff and Kushner and would “hear the Iranians out.”
“We’ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days,” Leavitt said. She did not offer any details about what U.S. officials were hearing.
Trump extends the Jones Act waiver for 90 days
Separately Friday, the White House said Trump issued a 90-day extension to the Jones Act waiver, making it easier for non-American vessels to transport oil and natural gas.
He first announced a 60-day waiver in March, hoping to stabilize energy prices and ease oil and gas shipments to the U.S. following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in peacetime.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, retreated on the news, vacillating between $103 a barrel and more than $107 on Friday — still nearly 50% higher than when the war began.
Iran has kept its stranglehold on traffic through the strait, attacking three ships this week, while the U.S. is maintaining a blockade on Iranian ports and Trump has ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be placing mines.
Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced Saturday that the country was sending minesweeper ships to the Mediterranean to help remove Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end.
The squeeze on shipments through the strait has rippled through global maritime trade flows, including through the Panama Canal nearly halfway around the world.
A growing toll even as ceasefires hold
Since the war began, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,490 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the Iran war started, according to authorities.
Additionally, 23 people were killed in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has also sustained casualties. An Indonesian peacekeeper died of wounds sustained in an attack on his base on March 29, raising to six — four Indonesians and two French — the number of force members killed since the war erupted, UNIFIL said Friday.
The situation in Lebanon remained tense after Trump announced Thursday that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah by three weeks. Hezbollah has not participated in the Washington-brokered diplomacy.
In a video released by his office Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed “a process to achieve a historic peace between Israel and Lebanon.”
———
Ahmed reported from Islamabad and Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; and Will Weissert in Washington contributed.
