Kamal Ghorui
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf
Iran’s chief negotiator at the Islamabad talks has blamed the United States for the failure to reach a deal, saying it failed to gain Tehran’s trust.In a series of posts on X, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said the Iranian delegation had presented “forward-looking initiatives” during the 21-hour negotiations. However, he said the American side ultimately failed to gain Iran’s trust. “Now is the time for the US to decide whether it can gain our trust or not,” he said.
US vice president JD Vance also said no agreement had been reached despite what he described as a “final and best offer”.“The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters in Islamabad, before leaving for US.Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign ministry said there had never been any expectation that an agreement could be reached in a single round of talks, soon after negotiations stalled in Islamabad.“Naturally, from the beginning, we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. No one had such an expectation,” ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.Neither Iran, nor US gave further details. But Iranian state media reported that the main disagreements were over Iran’s nuclear programme and transit through the Strait of Hormuz.Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said the talks ended because of what it called “unreasonable demands” from the US side.The talks, which went on for 21 hours, began in Islamabad on Saturday, as both sides tried to reach a deal to end the six-week conflict that has shaken the Middle East.
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It was the first direct meeting between the US and Iran since 2015, when the Obama administration signed a nuclear deal with Tehran that was later scrapped by Trump. It was also the highest-level engagement between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
