AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Vice President JD Vance has left U.S.-Iran peace talks in Pakistan without a deal, raising questions over the future of a precarious ceasefire. Negotiations broke down after 21 hours, prompting President Trump to say he's imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. This is what he said on Fox News this morning.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, we're going to be blockading. It'll take a little while, but it'll be effective pretty soon.
RASCOE: Betsy Joles joins us now from Islamabad, where Pakistani mediators have been facilitating these talks. Good morning.
BETSY JOLES, BYLINE: Hi, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So what were some of the main sticking points at the meeting that led it to fail?
JOLES: Well, Vance said in a press conference in Islamabad early this morning that the U.S. didn't get the commitment it wanted from Iran about its nuclear program. The U.S. wants Iran to promise it won't develop a nuclear weapon. Here's Vance.
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JD VANCE: That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
JOLES: And Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is a civilian one and that it has the right to continue to enrich uranium for that purpose. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, said on X that other issues discussed included the Strait of Hormuz, the removal of sanctions and reparations from the U.S. for war damages. There was a clampdown on information from both sides and from the Pakistanis while the talks were going on. So Vance's announcement and the statement from Iran's foreign ministry and then Trump's Truth Social post from this morning are really the first official confirmations we're getting about how these talks actually looked.
RASCOE: Was it a surprise that the talks ended without an agreement?
JOLES: Considering the topics on the table, not really. I spoke with Muhammad Faisal, a security analyst from the University of Technology Sydney about this. Here's what he had to say.
MUHAMMAD FAISAL: Parties were just coming out of a straight ceasefire. To expect that they would reach an agreement or a breakthrough in two days or even 24 hours was expecting too much.
JOLES: And we know that Iran's nuclear program has been a divisive issue between these countries for a long time. So getting something ironed out in a day would have been ambitious. And let's not forget that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran for 20 months before a nuclear agreement was reached in 2015. And Trump scrapped that deal during his term in office.
And the Strait of Hormuz is also not a quick fix. It's one of the world's biggest shipping routes for oil, and with its disruption, fuel prices around the world have shot up. Iran has essentially blockaded it since the war started six weeks ago, and it wants to maintain control over it. Meanwhile, the U.S. wants it cleared.
RASCOE: So what about Iran's demands, like the end of attacks on its allies?
JOLES: Continued attacks by Israel have certainly added a level of fragility to this ceasefire agreement, particularly in Lebanon. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted on X while the talks in Islamabad were underway, saying that Israel would continue to attack Iran and its proxies under his leadership. And Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has fired rockets across the Israeli border this month, falls into this category.
RASCOE: So what happens now?
JOLES: So before he left, Vance hinted at a, quote, "final and best offer" that was up for the Iranians to accept or not. But then this Truth Social post has come about the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and it said that, quote, "any Iranian who fires at us or at peaceful vessels will be blown to hell." And that comes after the Pentagon said that it had sent two U.S. destroyers through the Strait to begin clearing - mine-clearing operations.
Iran's navy has said that any mistake will trap the enemy in deadly whirlpools, and that was shortly after Trump's Truth Social post. And then we have Pakistan's foreign minister Ishaq Dar saying that it will continue to play a role in these peace efforts. He's basically urging both sides to uphold the ceasefire. And that came before Trump's latest comments, so we'll have to see how Pakistan is going to respond to those.
RASCOE: That was Betsy Joles in Islamabad. Thank you so much.
JOLES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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