US Vice President JD Vance seems to have revealed one of the reasons why no deal could be finalised during talks with Iranian representatives in Pakistan. According to him, Iran will ultimately decide what happens next in the war, and that representatives who were present in Islamabad lacked the authority to agree on a deal.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Vance spoke at length about what transpired during the peace talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad last weekend, and why a deal failed to materialise.
Vance said that significant progress was made during the talks and that Iran moved closer to the US position, but that was not enough to finalise an agreement. He added that it is Iranians who decide on what happens next in war after US clearly mentioned their priorities and demand in the talks, saying that the ‘the ball is very much in their court’.
“I wouldn’t just say that things went wrong. I also think things went right. We made a lot of progress,” Vance told Fox News. “They moved in our direction, which is why we saw some positive signs, but they didn’t move far enough,” he added.
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‘Iran reps in Pak lacked authority’
Vance also hinted that the final decision-making authority may still lie with a senior leader in Tehran, possibly the Supreme Leader. He suggested that the talks ended without a deal because the Iranian representatives present did not have the authority to make final decisions. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf were the two key Iranian leaders present at the talks.
“We acquired some knowledge about how the Iranians are negotiating, and this is ultimately why we left Pakistan,” he said.
“What we figured out is that they were unable, I think — the team that was there, was unable to cut a deal,” he explained. “They had to go back to Tehran, either from the supreme leader or somebody else, and actually get approval to the terms that we had set.”
Araghchi, however, offered a different account of what led to the breakdown of the talks. He said the US and Iran were very close to reaching an agreement before the situation changed, with the US announcing a blockade of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
“In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with the US in good faith to end the war. But when we were just inches away from an ‘Islamabad MoU’, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and a blockade,” Araghchi posted on his X handle after the meeting on April 13.
