The U.S. and Iran were close to a deal in Islamabad when the Americans shifted the goalposts and walked away, said Iran’s foreign minister.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi. (Hamed Malekpour/Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)
By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration’s representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan’s capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were “inches away” from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict.
“In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with U.S. in good faith to end war,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media.
“But when just inches away from ‘Islamabad [Memorandum of Understanding],’ we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade. Zero lessons earned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity,” he wrote.
The failed weekend talks marked the second time since February that U.S. negotiators have been accused of sabotaging formal negotiations despite participants believing a deal was within reach.
Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran on Feb. 28 that “we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal.”
The Trump administration’s negotiating team, which consisted principally of Vice President J.D. Vance and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly set down numerous “red lines” during the Islamabad talks this past weekend, including demanding that Iran end all uranium enrichment — which Iran has a right to conduct under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — and dismantle its major nuclear energy facilities.
“We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms,” Vance told reporters on Sunday. “I think that we were quite flexible.”
President Donald Trump claimed on social media that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.”
