New York, April 25 US President Donald Trump on Saturday night cancelled his negotiators’ trip to Pakistan because of the confusion over who is in charge of Iran and the “tremendous infighting" among their leadership.
After Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi landed in Islamabad on Friday, Trump’s Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt had announced that the negotiators, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his Special Representative Steve Witkoff, would go there.
She said Vice President JD Vance would be standing by to join them if it seemed useful.
Striking an optimistic note, she said the US had “certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days”.
However, Tehran had already ruled out direct talks with Washington by Araghchi, who was in Islamabad.
Significantly, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Bagher Ghalibaf, a hardliner who led the Iranian team in the April 11 direct talks with the US, was not going to Islamabad.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei, who accompanied Araghchi, said on X, “No meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the US. Iran's observations would be conveyed to Pakistan”.
Araghchi tried to pass off the Islamabad visit as a routine affair of bilateralism that was part of a swing through Oman and Russia.
Oman had acted as the go-between in the indirect negotiations in Geneva a couple of days before Israel bombed Iran, with the US joining in, making it a confrontation between the US and Iran.
Russia is one of Iran’s supporters, providing it with intelligence and material help, and diplomatic support.
In his short post on Truth Social, Trump did not make any fresh threats against Iran, but said, “We have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call”!!
“Too much time wasted on travelling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership’,” he said.
The split in Iran’s leadership, between moderates and hardliners, came to the fore last week when Araghchi, considered a moderate, declared on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was open, only to have the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reinstate it on Saturday.
After attempts at restarting the stalled negotiations in Islamabad last weekend and earlier this week failed, Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely, but kept the Naval blockade of Iranian ports.
In threats against Iran in the past, he had said he would wipe out its civilisation and take out all its bridges and power stations.
Tasnim, the semi-official news agency, said that negotiations “depend on the lifting of the US naval blockade”.
“Officials have argued that the continued blockade constitutes a violation of the truce,” it added.
It said that Araghchi met with Pakistan’s military chief Asim Munir, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and briefed them on “Tehran’s positions regarding the latest ceasefire developments” in the Iran war.
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