US vice-president JD Vance
TOI correspondent from Washington: US vice-president JD Vance is leading a high-powered delegation for talks with Iran in Islamabad this weekend amid a yawning gulf between Washington and Tehran that is wider than the Strait of Hormuz, which is itself under contention. The two issues, along with a host of other disagreements, are testing a fragile two-week ceasefire, resulting in a diplomatic stand-off and renewed fighting even before the sit-down in Pakistan, which is hosting the talks amid questions about its own credibility. At the heart of the gap is a fundamental discord over whether the truce extends to Lebanon, where Israel is pulverizing Iran’s proxy fighters from Hezbollah. Iran, and hosts Pakistan, say it does. In a public statement, Pakistan’s prime minister Shahbaz Sharief declared that the truce agreement covered “everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, effective immediately.” That claim has been flatly rejected by both Tel Aviv and Washington, with Vance saying there was a “legitimate misunderstanding,” arising from “a lot of bad faith negotiation and bad faith propaganda,” and Lebanon was never part of the truce deal. Washington thinks Iran was led to believe something the U.S had not signed off on. The insinuation that Pakistan gave Iran assurances that were not part of the truce deal is testing Islamabad’s credibility in its effort to play a good-faith mediator. The result is a diplomatic impasse that has already spilled into military signaling, even as Vance’s Air Force Two is revving engines for the long flight to Islamabad. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, whose son Zach Witkoff is seen as a “crypto bro” with close ties to the Pakistani establishment, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, will accompany Vance, the White House said.
