US VP Vance Sets Off To Pakistan To Lead Talks With Iranian negotiators

washington : President Donald Trump is enlisting a member of his inner circle who appears to be the most reluctant proponent of conflict with Iran to find a solution to the war that began six weeks ago and fend off the US president’s stunning threat to destroy “an entire civilization.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, long a skeptic of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the possibility of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, departed Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

This came at a time when the tenuous and temporary ceasefire was on the verge of collapse. The gap between Iran’s public demands and those of the United States and its partner Israel seems irreconcilable. And in the United States, where Vance could ask voters to make him the next president within two years, there is growing political and economic pressure to get it done.

Vance is accompanied by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner participated in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators before Trump and Israel launched a war against Iran on Feb. 28 aimed at addressing U.S. concerns about Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programs and its support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East.

The White House provided few details about the format of the talks — whether they would be direct or indirect — and did not offer specific expectations for the meeting.

But Vance’s arrival for the talks marks a rare moment of high-level U.S. government interaction with the Iranian government. The most direct contact since the 1979 Islamic Revolution was when President Barack Obama called newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in September 2013 to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.

Both sides face steep climb on the road to progress

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Immediately after the White House and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday evening, the parties fell out over the terms of the ceasefire.

Iran has insisted that ending Israel’s war in Lebanon is part of the ceasefire. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump said that the ceasefire does not include Lebanon and that Israel’s operations there continue.

Meanwhile, the United States demanded that Iran be successful in reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic had closed the critical shipping waterway in response to intensifying Israeli attacks on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

On Thursday night, Trump said Iran was “doing a very bad job” of allowing oil tankers through, writing on social media: “This is not our deal!”

White House press secretary Anna Kelly said Vance, Witkoff, Kushner and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “have always cooperated in these discussions” and said Trump was optimistic that a permanent agreement could be reached during the two-week ceasefire. “President Trump has a proven track record of making good deals on behalf of the United States and the American people, and he will only accept a deal that puts America first,” Kelly said.

Big risks for peace and politics

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This is the riskiest moment yet for Vance, who spent much of the last year as a background player in Trump’s White House, particularly where others like Elon Musk and Rubio took turns serving as the president’s ever-present advisors.

But Vance’s portfolio is rapidly growing fat, first with a mission to root out fraud in government programs at home, and now with a mission to help unravel the U.S. war in the Middle East, where complexity is not even enough to describe things.

Vance has little diplomatic experience, having served in the Iraq War while in the Marines and as a U.S. senator for two years and vice president for just over a year.

On Wednesday he rejected speculation that the Iranians had requested that he join the talks, telling reporters: “I don’t know about that. I would be surprised if it were true. But you know, I wanted to get involved because I thought I could make a difference.”

Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official who is now executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank, said Vance, who has little experience on Iran policy, was an interesting choice to lead the panel.

Schanzer noted that Trump’s vice president was “less enthusiastic” than other senior officials in the Republican administration, making Vance an interesting interlocutor for the Iranian side.

“I think they probably favored him knowing that his perspective on foreign intervention was skeptical,” Schanzer said of Iranians. “I think he’s going to need help. I don’t think he’s ever engaged in a negotiation this slow and this serious. This is as serious as it gets.”

The White House did not detail who would be involved in the talks other than Vance, Witkoff and Kushner, but Kelly said officials from the National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon “will also play a supporting role.”

During the first rounds of indirect nuclear talks with the Iranians before the war, Democrats and some nuclear experts questioned whether Kushner and Witkoff had sufficient technical knowledge. The White House did not say whether the duo, whom Trump appointed to conduct some of the most difficult negotiations after returning to office, had a nuclear expert with them in these talks.

Negotiating peace is a challenge for any vice president

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Joel Goldstein, a law professor at Saint Louis University who specializes in the history of the vice presidency, said it is not uncommon for vice presidents to take on significant negotiating roles on behalf of the president.

However, he said, “I do not recall a situation where a vice president was sent to negotiate a ceasefire or peace in connection with a war in which the United States was involved.”

Vance and Rubio are seen as the strongest potential candidates among the Republican Party’s 2028 presidential candidates, but neither has given a clear answer about whether he will run.

The vice president’s team is not considering negotiations with future political considerations in mind, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Goldstein said Vance, as vice president, would inherently carry all the burdens of the administration if he eventually runs for president. But stepping in to lead the negotiations further identifies him with the conflict.

“His very visible involvement in the negotiations means that if things go south, people will point to him,” Goldstein said.

At the same time, Goldstein said, “If things go well, that will be something he can point to.”