Kamal Ghorui
United States Vice President JD Vance on Saturday said that President Donald Trump called “a dozen times” as he and his team were engaged in peace talks with Iran in Pakistan’s Islamabad.While speaking to reporters, Vance said, “We were talking to the President consistently. I don’t know how many times we talked to him — a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past 21 hours.”“We were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith. And we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer,” Vance added.Talks between the US and Iran hit a dead end for now after no agreement was reached. According to Vance, the core dispute remained Iran’s nuclear programme.Describing it as a “red line” for the Trump administration, the Vice President said Iran was told to end its program and halt uranium enrichment.“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and that they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.He added that it is the “core goal of the President (Donald Trump),” and that is what they attempted to achieve through negotiations.“But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and that they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance told reporters.Meanwhile, Iran said that the demands made by the US are “unreasonable” and blamed the US for the collapse of talks.“Before the negotiations, I emphasised that we have the necessary good faith and will, but due to the experiences of the two previous wars, we have no trust in the opposing side,” Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X.He added that the Iranian delegation put forth constructive initiatives, “but the other side was unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations.”“America has understood our logic and principles, and now it’s time for it to decide whether it can earn our trust or not,” he added.Iran has long denied seeking nuclear weapons but has insisted on its right to a civilian nuclear programme. Experts say its stockpile of enriched uranium, though not weapons-grade, is only a short technical step away.Since the US and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, it has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 2,020 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel, and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states, and caused lasting damage to infrastructure in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries. Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz has largely cut off the Persian Gulf and its oil and gas exports from the global economy, sending energy prices soaring.Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said his country will try to facilitate a new dialogue between Iran and the US in the coming days.“It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to ceasefire,” Dar said.The deadlock — and Vance’s take-it-or-leave-it proposal that Iran end its nuclear program — mirrored February’s nuclear talks in Switzerland. Though President Donald Trump has said the subsequent war was meant to compel Iran’s leaders to abandon nuclear ambitions, each side’s positions appeared unchanged in negotiations following six weeks of fighting.
