Vance to lead U.S.-Iran peace talks in Pakistan over the weekend
This weekend, President Donald Trump is sending a team of diplomats led by Vice President JD Vance to Pakistan for mediated discussions with Iran to work out a more permanent end to the weeks-long conflict.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Wednesday that talks will be held in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad, on Saturday morning local time.
Trump also confirmed in a phone call with the New York Post that the talks would “take place very soon.”
He was not certain at the time of the phone call if Vance would attend as Trump revealed that “there’s a question of safety, security.”
“With respect to the safety of the vice president, we fully trust the United States Secret Service to do their job to keep the vice president and the president’s negotiating team safe,” Leavitt said when pressed on the issue of Vance’s safety.
The weekend meeting would mark the first in-person negotiations since the conflict began on February 28th.
Leavitt said that Trump “wants to see the Strait reopened immediately without limitation and that’s something we’re going to hold them to.”
Questions arose about the possibility that the ceasefire would hold shortly after its announcement on Tuesday evening.
CNN and some other outlets reported that Iranian state media claimed to have “achieved a great victory and forced the United States to accept in principle its 10-point plan.”
Trump called out this reporting as false, explaining that the network’s statement came from a Nigerian outlet with no authority to report on the delicate agreement.
The press secretary reiterated that CNN’s report contradicted Tehran’s official statement about the ceasefire agreement and coming negotiations.
“I’ve seen a lot of inaccurate coverage today from the media about these negotiations and these plans, already. So, let me be clear and correct the record. The Iranians originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded,” Leavitt explained. “It was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team.”
“Many outlets in this room have falsely reported on that plan as being acceptable to the United States, and that is false,” she stated.
She said that given that Iran was being “completely decimated” by the U.S., the remnants of the regime “acknowledged reality” and reworked its proposal.
They put forward a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan to the president and his team,” Leavitt recounted. “President Trump and the team determined the new modified plan was a workable basis on which to negotiate, and to align it with our own fifteen-point proposal
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