Middle East crisis Peace talks

No talks in Pakistan – Iran returns home and US cancels

Iran's delegation in Pakistan has left the country, Pakistani government sources told Reuters.

The information was confirmed by the Iranian state-controlled news agency IRNA, reports the BBC.

This is happening without having met the American delegation, which will no longer travel to the country, Donald Trump tells Fox News.

– I told my staff a while ago, when they were getting ready to leave, that "no, you are not going to make an 18-hour flight there. We have all the cards in hand", says Trump.

The US delegation was to have been led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that the delegation had not planned any meeting with the US.

The White House had previously announced that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would travel to Pakistan to meet, among other things, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is part of the Iranian delegation. 

Expert: There is a risk that we are back to square one

The risk with the failed talks between Iran and the US is that the countries "see a point in raising the temperature" in the conflict, says Iran expert Rouzbeh Parsi to Dagens Nyheter. There is a possibility that there will still be a meeting in the near future, but it could also be that one of the countries chooses to "initiate hostilities," he says.

- In that case, we would be back to square one.

Parsi also says that there are only a few people on each side who want to see a full-scale war and that it is difficult to predict what will happen now.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi left Pakistan before the American delegation's trip had even begun.

Analysis: It was unlikely that this would work

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had barely left Pakistan before it became clear that the United States was not even going there, writes Nic Robertson in an analysis for CNN.

According to Robertson, the circumstances leading up to the countries' visit were very unclear. The United States claimed that Iran had requested a meeting, Iran denied that any meeting with the United States would take place at all, and it had been logistically very difficult to arrange, he writes.

The US delegation was at least 17 hours away from there and Trump had decided to send, among others, Steve Witkoff, whom Iran's negotiators do not trust. Either Trump misjudged the "diplomatic dynamics" or Iran is not ready to meet his demands, according to Robertson.

SR's US correspondent Ginna Lindberg says that the negotiations seem to have stalled even before they have started.

– This means that the negotiations that Trump has said he hopes for are now canceled or postponed.

She further says that the countries are far apart on several issues, and that the most important thing for the US is Iranian guarantees that the country will never acquire nuclear weapons.