President Trump said on Tuesday that he was extending a cease-fire with Iran that had been about to expire, even as Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Pakistan for a second round of negotiations with Iran was put on hold after Tehran failed to respond to American positions.
Mr. Trump said on social media that, at the request of Pakistan’s leadership, the cease-fire would stay in effect until Iran’s “proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” The president, however, said that the U.S. military would continue to blockade Iranian ports.
That stance appeared to be a major sticking point for Iran. The country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on social media earlier on Tuesday that the blockade was “an act of war and thus a violation of the cease-fire.”
Although the two-week truce, which had been set to end on Wednesday in Iran, was extended, it was unclear what steps Iran or the United States would take next.
Mr. Vance, who had been expected to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday morning, was staying in Washington to attend additional policy meetings, a White House official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss potential scheduling.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, said Iran had not decided whether to send its negotiators to Pakistan. Mr. Baghaei blamed “contradictory messages, inconsistent behavior and unacceptable actions by the American side,” according to Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB.
In private, two senior Iranian officials had said Monday that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander and speaker of the Iranian Parliament, would attend negotiations in Pakistan if Mr. Vance were there.
As recently as Tuesday morning, Mr. Vance had still been planning to travel to Pakistan. But because Iran had given no response to the Trump administration’s negotiating positions, the U.S. official said, the diplomatic process was in effect paused.
The talks could be back on at a moment’s notice if Iran’s negotiators respond in a way that Mr. Trump deems acceptable. U.S. officials were also looking for a clear sign that Iran’s negotiators had been fully empowered to reach an agreement.
The delay was another hurdle in the Trump administration’s push to secure an agreement that would curb Iran’s nuclear program, and it came as U.S. forces remain poised to launch another wave of strikes on Iran, having maintained their substantial presence in the Middle East.
Even if the sides return to the negotiating table, many sticking points remain on Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic conduit for oil and gas off Iran’s southern coast. The threat of Iranian attacks has throttled ship traffic through the strait, prompting an American blockade of Iranian ports that the U.S. Navy says has forced 28 ships to turn around.
The United States recently transmitted a written proposal to the Iranians intended to establish base line points of agreement that could frame more detailed negotiations. The document covered a broad range of issues, but the core sticking points were the same ones that have bedeviled Western negotiators for more than a decade: the scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the fate of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
It’s unclear what exactly the United States has proposed or what the president would be willing to accept. The American position could range from demanding that Iran abandon enrichment entirely to allowing a limited civilian program under strict oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency, paired with the closure of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
One of the ideas discussed during negotiations last year was a multinational consortium working with Iran to enrich uranium for civilian uses; potential locations included an island in the Persian Gulf. Regarding the stockpile, negotiators are weighing options including whether Iran should surrender its enriched uranium directly to the United States or transfer it to a third country.
Also on the table is what the United States might offer in return. Iran has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets frozen under American sanctions as part of Mr. Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign, and administration officials are debating whether releasing some of those funds could be part of a final deal. Officials have also discussed whether the United States and Persian Gulf partners such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates might offer broader economic integration to Iran.
Mr. Trump has been adamant in private conversations that his deal must be better than the one struck by President Barack Obama in 2015. Knowing that, Iran hawks close to the president have repeatedly invoked Mr. Obama’s deal as a tactic to keep him from agreeing to what they view as dangerous concessions.
Any American position on enrichment will have to contend with Iran’s longstanding argument, rooted in its accession to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, that the pact guarantees signatories the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
The pause in talks capped a turbulent few days of public messaging from Mr. Trump, whose statements have at times appeared at odds with the state of the negotiations.
In a telephone interview with CBS News on Friday, Mr. Trump declared that Iran had “agreed to everything” and described a joint operation to remove Iranian nuclear material. “Our people, together with the Iranians, are going to work together to go get it. And then we’ll take it to the United States,” he said. Iranian officials quickly disputed that characterization.
Then on Sunday, Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran had violated the cease-fire by firing on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, including a French ship and a British freighter. That same day, U.S. military forces seized an Iranian-flagged ship, the Touska, that Mr. Trump said had tried to evade the blockade on the country’s ports.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military stopped and boarded a tanker in the Indian Ocean that was carrying oil from Iran, the Pentagon said. It was the latest effort by the Trump administration to squeeze Iran’s oil-reliant economy since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28.
“We will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” the Defense Department said in a statement that included a video that appeared to show Navy SEALS landing by helicopter on the ship, the M/T Tifani.
The Pentagon added that it would “continue to deny illicit actors and their vessels freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain.”
With the M/T Tifani now at least temporarily in the custody of the military, a U.S. military official said it was up to the White House to decide what to do with the sanctioned vessel and its cargo, which the official said was in the Bay of Bengal.
In Lebanon, more fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, a militia backed by Iran, threatened a 10-day cease-fire announced by Israel and the Lebanese government last week.
Hezbollah confirmed on Tuesday that it had fired rockets and drones into northern Israel in what it said was a response to Israeli violations of the cease-fire. The Israeli military has kept up its strikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, citing a right to “self-defense” as outlined in the truce.
Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt, Leo Sands, Tyler Pager, Shirin Hakim, Sanam Mahoozi, Euan Ward and Michael Levenson.
