ISLAMABAD (AP) — U.S. envoys are expected to travel to Pakistan on Saturday in a new bid to salvage ceasefire talks with Tehran, even as Iran ruled out direct negotiations with U.S. representatives as its top diplomat arrived in Islamabad.
The latest effort to broker a deal comes as an indefinite ceasefire has paused most fighting, but the economic fallout is still mounting with global energy shipments disrupted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
On Saturday, Iran resumed commercial flights from Tehran’s international airport for the first time since the conflict with the U.S. and Israel began about two months ago. Iran’s state-run television reported that flights were scheduled to depart for Istanbul, Oman’s capital of Muscat and the Saudi city of Medina. Iran partly reopened its airspace earlier this month amid a ceasefire with the U.S. which halted fighting between the two countries.
The airport opening comes as Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met twice with Pakistan’s top military and political leaders since arriving in Islamabad on Friday night, officials said.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, the Iranian delegation will hold talks with Pakistan’s senior leadership as the U.S. envoys were expected to travel to Islamabad on Saturday. Officials have not specified when Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are due to arrive.
Pakistan works to get US and Iran back to the negotiating table
Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad was in a near-lockdown early Saturday ahead of the talks, where the weeklong security restrictions have disrupted daily life across the capital. Residents struggle to commute even short distances as checkpoints, road closures, and diversions have become a routine sight, particularly around sensitive zones.
The usually busy arteries leading to the airport and the heavily fortified Red Zone were largely deserted early Saturday, with movement tightly restricted. Security forces, including troops, paramilitary commandos, and police, maintained a strong presence at key intersections, especially near the airport, while helicopters circled overhead throughout the morning.
Pakistan has been trying to get U.S. and Iranian officials back to the table after Trump this week announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire with Iran, honoring Islamabad’s request for more time for diplomatic outreach.
The White House said Friday that President Donald Trump would send Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to meet with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. But shortly after Araghchi arrived in Islamabad, his ministry said any talks would be indirect, with messages conveyed between the two sides by Pakistani officials.
Araghchi and the two Trump envoys held hours of indirect talks in Geneva on Feb. 27 over Tehran’s nuclear program, but walked away without a deal. The next day, Israel and the United States started the war against Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president had decided to send Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan “to hear the Iranians out.”
“We’ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days,” Leavitt said. She did not offer any details about what U.S. officials were hearing.
Trump extends the Jones Act waiver for 90 days
Separately Friday, the White House said Trump issued a 90-day extension to the Jones Act waiver, making it easier for non-American vessels to transport oil and natural gas.
He first announced a 60-day waiver in March in a move intended to stabilize energy prices and ease oil and gas shipments to the U.S. following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in peacetime.
Iran has kept its stranglehold on traffic through the strait, attacking three ships earlier this week, while the U.S. is maintaining a blockade on Iranian ports and Trump has ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be placing mines.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, retreated on the news, vacillating between $103 a barrel and more than $107 — still nearly 50% higher than where it was on Feb. 28, when the war began.
The squeeze on shipments through the strait has rippled through global maritime trade flows, including through the Panama Canal nearly halfway around the world.
Also on Saturday, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that the country will send minesweeper ships to the Mediterranean so they are in place to remove mines Iran has placed in the Strait of Hormuz once the hostilities end.
A growing toll even as ceasefires hold
Since the war began, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,490 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the war started, according to authorities.
Additionally, 23 people were killed in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has also sustained casualties. UNIFIL said Friday that an Indonesian peacekeeper died of wounds sustained in an attack on his base on March 29, raising to six — four Indonesians and two French — the number of force members killed since the war erupted.
Tensions linger in Lebanon despite extended truce
The situation in Lebanon remained tense after Trump on Thursday announced that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah by three weeks. Hezbollah has not participated in the diplomacy brokered by Washington.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a video statement released by his office on Friday, hailed “a process to achieve a historic peace between Israel and Lebanon.”
Earlier, the Israeli army asked residents of the southern Lebanese village of Deir Aames to evacuate, saying Hezbollah was using the village to launch attacks against Israel.
Israel’s military said it had downed a drone over Lebanon following the launch of a small surface-to-air missile by Hezbollah. The militant group, meanwhile, said it shot down an Israeli drone with a surface-to-air missile over the outskirts of the southern port city of Tyre.
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