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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrives in Islamabad, but Tehran yet to commit to more talks with US delegation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump is sending envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan as Iran\u2019s foreign minister arrived in the country, raising hopes of new talks on ending the US-Israeli war on Iran amid a fragile ceasefire and growing tensions over control of the Hormuz Strait.<\/p>\n White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that US envoys would sit down with Abbas Araghchi, expressing hope that parties would \u201cmove the ball forward to a deal\u201d, but it remained unclear whether the Iranian delegation had agreed to hold talks.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Writing on X on Friday, Iran\u2019s top diplomat had said he was off on a \u201ctimely tour of Islamabad, Muscat, and Moscow\u201d, to coordinate on \u201cbilateral matters\u201d, with no specific mention of any intention to meet with US negotiators.<\/p>\n Trump expressed optimism over a potential deal, telling the news agency Reuters that Iran was \u201cmaking an offer\u201d aimed at satisfying US demands, which include ending its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n Earlier, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran had a chance to make a \u201cgood deal\u201d. \u201cIran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely \u2026 at the negotiating table,\u201d he said, adding that all they had to do was \u201cabandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways\u201d.<\/p>\n But two Pakistani government sources told Reuters that the Iranian foreign minister\u2019s visit would be brief, focusing on Iran\u2019s proposals for talks with the US, which mediator Pakistan would then convey to Washington.<\/p>\n Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera\u2019s Ali Hashem said a \u201csenior official\u201d had \u201cmade it clear\u201d to him that there would not be any US-Iran talks in Pakistan.<\/p>\n \u201cThese regional partners all have their own ideas on how to solve this deadlock, but for the moment, Iran has said it would not meet for a new round of talks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reports on Araghchi\u2019s trip in Iranian state media made no mention of Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran\u2019s parliament, who was the head of its delegation at talks with a US delegation earlier this month that ended with no breakthrough.<\/p>\n The Iranian parliament\u2019s media office denied a report that Ghalibaf had resigned as head of Iran\u2019s negotiating team, adding that there was no new round of talks scheduled yet, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n US Vice President JD Vance also participated in the first round of talks, but is not travelling to Pakistan on this occasion, though Leavitt said he remained \u201cdeeply involved\u201d and was on \u201cstandby\u201d to join if needed.<\/p>\n She said Trump decided to send Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan \u201cto hear the Iranians out\u201d. \u201cWe\u2019ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days,\u201d she maintained, without offering any further details.<\/p>\n Reporting from Washington, Al Jazeera\u2019s Mike Hanna said there appeared to be a \u201cgraded process\u201d in place, describing it as \u201can initial exploratory phase\u201d that could lead to \u201chigher-level engagement if negotiations deepen\u201d.<\/p>\n A new round of talks had been expected to start on Tuesday but did not materialise, with Iran saying it was not yet ready to commit to attending.<\/p>\n Trump had unilaterally extended a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday to allow more time to reconvene the negotiators as the US continued its blockade on Iranian ports.<\/p>\n Iran says it will not stop blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial maritime trade chokepoint, until Trump lifts his blockade. On Friday, the US applied more pressure on Tehran by freezing $344m in cryptocurrency assets in a bid to \u201csystematically degrade Tehran\u2019s ability to generate, move, and repatriate funds\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrives in Islamabad, but Tehran yet to commit to more talks with US delegation. United States President Donald Trump is sending envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan as Iran\u2019s foreign minister arrived in the country, raising hopes of new talks on ending the US-Israeli war on Iran amid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Top negotiators from last round absent<\/h2>\n
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