Islamabad, Pakistan – Greater than 12 hours of face-to-face negotiations between the USA and Iran ended with out settlement in Islamabad on Sunday, leaving a fragile two-week ceasefire as the one barrier between diplomacy and a return to warfare.
Pakistan, which spent weeks positioning itself as a mediator and succeeded in bringing each side into the identical room, emerged with its position intact. However officers acknowledge the more durable part now begins — getting American and Iranian negotiators again into talks earlier than their variations explode into full-fledged warfare once more.
Beneficial Tales
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“Pakistan has been and can proceed to play its position to facilitate engagements and dialogue between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the USA of America within the days to come back,” Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Overseas Minister Ishaq Dar mentioned in a press release after the conclusion of the talks.
The talks, the highest-level direct engagement between Washington and Tehran for the reason that 1979 Islamic Revolution, faltered over variations surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The straightforward truth is that we have to see an affirmative dedication that they won’t search a nuclear weapon, and they won’t search the instruments that will allow them to rapidly obtain a nuclear weapon,” mentioned US Vice President JD Vance, who led the American delegation alongside particular envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Nevertheless, Vance left a slender opening for the resumption of talks.
“We depart right here with a quite simple proposal, a way of understanding that’s our remaining and finest provide. We’ll see if the Iranians settle for it,” Vance mentioned, tapping the rostrum for emphasis, earlier than ending his temporary remarks, which lasted for lower than 5 minutes.
Pakistani and Iranian sources confirmed that the Iranian delegation met senior Pakistani officers afterward Sunday earlier than departing for Tehran, although particulars of these discussions stay unclear.
What is obvious is that Pakistan isn’t giving up but.
Washington’s pink traces
US officers mentioned that Iran had entered negotiations misreading its leverage, believing it held benefits that, in Washington’s evaluation, it didn’t.
In keeping with these officers, Vance spent a lot of his time through the talks correcting what they described as Iranian misperceptions concerning the US place — asserting that no deal can be attainable with no full dedication on the nuclear challenge.
Officers additionally advised that Trump’s subsequent announcement of a blockade within the Strait of Hormuz was not an impulsive response, however a pre-planned step aimed toward eradicating the waterway as an Iranian bargaining software and forcing the nuclear challenge again to the centre of any future talks.
However the US officers, talking on background, additionally acknowledged that the gulf within the positions between Washington and Tehran that they did not bridge prolonged to points past Iran’s nuclear programme.
In essence, they mentioned, the 2 sides did not agree on six key factors: ending all uranium enrichment; dismantling main enrichment amenities; eradicating Iran’s stockpile of extremely enriched uranium; accepting a broader regional safety framework involving US allies; ending funding for teams Washington designates as “terrorist” organisations, together with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis; and absolutely reopening the Strait of Hormuz with out tolls.
Hours after the talks ended, Trump acknowledged partial progress, however underscored the central deadlock.
“The assembly went effectively, most factors have been agreed to, however the one level that actually mattered, NUCLEAR, was not,” he wrote on Reality Social.
“Efficient instantly, the USA Navy, the Best within the World, will start the method of BLOCKADING any and all Ships attempting to enter, or depart, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump mentioned. “Iran is not going to be allowed to revenue off this Unlawful Act of EXTORTION.”
Iran has successfully managed entry to the Strait of Hormuz, by way of which roughly 20 p.c of worldwide oil provides cross, for the reason that US-Israeli assaults started on February 28.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has imposed what analysts describe as a de facto toll system, requiring vessels to safe clearance codes and transit below escort by way of a managed hall.
The disruption has pushed oil costs above $100 per barrel at instances, unsettling international markets and inserting sustained strain on energy-importing nations throughout Asia and Europe.
Tehran has framed its management of the strait as each a safety measure and a key negotiating lever, one it has proven little willingness to relinquish with no broader settlement.
Tehran’s standpoint
Iran’s account of the breakdown differed sharply.
In a put up on X early on April 13, after returning to Tehran, Iran’s Overseas Minister Abbas Araghchi mentioned his nation had engaged in “good religion”, solely to face shifting calls for.
“When simply inches away from an Islamabad MoU, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade,” he wrote. “Zero classes realized. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”
The reference to an “Islamabad MoU”, a memorandum of understanding, was the clearest public sign but that the 2 sides had come nearer to a proper settlement than both authorities had beforehand acknowledged.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the nation’s delegation, mentioned his crew had proposed “forward-looking initiatives”, however did not safe belief.
“As a result of experiences of the 2 earlier wars, we’ve no belief within the opposing facet,” he wrote on Sunday.
Overseas Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei additionally pointed to partial progress however unresolved variations.
“On some points we truly reached mutual understanding, however there was a niche over two or three essential points and in the end the talks didn’t lead to an settlement,” he mentioned.
Tehran’s key calls for, together with an finish to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, the discharge of $6bn in frozen property, ensures on its nuclear programme and the appropriate to cost vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, remained unmet.
Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, nonetheless, provided a extra measured view — suggesting that Tehran was not closing the window on talks.
“The Islamabad Talks shouldn’t be an occasion however a course of,” he wrote in his message on X on Sunday. “The Islamabad Talks laid the muse for a diplomatic course of that, if belief and can are strengthened, can create a sustainable framework for the pursuits of all events.”
Pakistan’s balancing act
For Pakistan, analysts say, the end result represents a setback however not a failure.
Officers have been cautious to explain the talks as “an essential opening step in a seamless diplomatic course of”, stressing that problems with such complexity can’t be resolved in a single spherical.
The emphasis, they mentioned, was on maintaining the channel open.
Muhammad Obaidullah, a former Pakistan Navy commodore who has served in Iran as a diplomat, mentioned expectations of a breakthrough have been all the time unrealistic.
“The mere truth of bringing each events nose to nose is a major diplomatic achievement in itself,” he instructed Al Jazeera. “The diplomacy shouldn’t be useless.”
Ishtiaq Ahmad, professor emeritus of worldwide relations at Quaid-i-Azam College in Islamabad, went additional.
“The talks didn’t collapse; they concluded with out settlement however with an outlined US provide on the desk and the channel nonetheless intact,” he mentioned.
“Pakistan’s position was to maneuver the disaster from escalation to structured engagement, which it achieved. The absence of convergence displays structural variations between the US and Iran, not a failure of mediation.”
Each Trump and Iranian officers have praised Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Military Workers Discipline Marshal Asim Munir for his or her efforts to safe the ceasefire, and for internet hosting the talks in Islamabad. That, say analysts, means that they continue to be open to additional Pakistan-brokered negotiations.
Sahar Baloch, a Germany-based scholar of Iran, mentioned that belief stays Pakistan’s most useful asset.
“The true check of credibility shouldn’t be stopping breakdowns, however remaining related after them,” she mentioned.
Fragile ceasefire
The rapid menace to Pakistan’s position comes from the evolving state of affairs within the Strait of Hormuz and in Lebanon.
Iran has already warned that continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon might render negotiations meaningless. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has framed such assaults as a direct problem to the ceasefire.
Trump’s blockade announcement now provides strain from a second entrance.
Ahmad, a former Pakistan chair at Oxford College, warned {that a} collapse of the truce would sharply slender diplomatic choices.
“If the ceasefire collapses, the rapid consequence is the lack of the diplomatic window,” he mentioned. “A second spherical turns into far tougher as a result of each side would return to negotiating below energetic escalation, the place positions are inclined to harden reasonably than converge.”
Obaidullah drew a historic parallel with the US naval quarantine of Cuba through the 1962 missile disaster. What if China have been to make use of its personal ships to import Iranian oil? Would the US assault them?
“The world will once more be watching who blinks first,” Obaidullah mentioned. “Nevertheless, it could flip right into a far higher battle if neither facet does.”
The Cuban Missile Disaster of October 1962 introduced the US and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear warfare, after Washington found Moscow had put in nuclear missiles on Cuban soil, inside hanging distance of the American mainland.
The US blocked the Soviets from offering extra tools to Cuba, and finally, a diplomatic settlement was reached, with the Soviets agreeing to withdraw the missiles in trade for a US pledge to not invade Cuba.
Baloch, the Berlin-based scholar, agreed that the state of affairs stays unstable.
“The ceasefire dangers turning into extra symbolic than substantive,” she mentioned. “However paradoxically, escalation can generally pressure a return to talks, even when below extra pressing and fewer beneficial circumstances.”
What’s the street forward?
Pakistan’s room for manoeuvring can also be formed by its financial fragility.
The disruption within the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up vitality costs, compounding pressures on an economic system already below pressure earlier than the battle.
Ahmad mentioned this creates each urgency and limits.
“Financial publicity, particularly to vitality shocks and exterior financing, creates urgency for Pakistan to forestall a protracted battle,” he mentioned.
“However it additionally reinforces a constraint: Pakistan can’t afford escalation with both facet. Its leverage shouldn’t be coercive; it’s positional. It comes from being the one channel acceptable to each side, not from the power to impose outcomes,” Ahmad mentioned.
Eight days stay till the tip of the preliminary two-week truce, a window Pakistani officers mentioned privately represents a real alternative for additional technical and political alignment, if each side select to make use of it.
Ahmad advised that any breakthrough would rely on making a sequence of steps acceptable to each side.
“The US is asking for early nuclear commitments; Iran is asking for ensures and reduction first,” he mentioned.
Pakistan’s position, he added, can be to assist “construction this sequencing, hold each side engaged, and forestall breakdown at every stage”.
Islamabad received’t be the one drafting a deal itself, he emphasised, noting, “At this level, sustaining the channel is as essential because the substance of the deal itself.”
