President Donald Trump is sending Vice President JD Vance and other top negotiators to Pakistan for mediated talks with Iran this weekend aimed at cementing a permanent ceasefire, the White House announced on Wednesday.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the U.S. participation in the talks, which will be held in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad beginning on Saturday morning local time, during a press briefing, which came amid growing doubts that the two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday evening will hold.
Vance will be joined in Pakistan by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, Leavitt said.
Leavitt dismissed media reports from Iran that it had again closed down the Strait of Hormuz in response to Israel’s intensified bombing of targets in Lebanon, stating that taking such an action would be “completely unacceptable.”
Trump, she said, “wants to see the strait reopened immediately without limitation and that’s something we’re going to hold them to.”
She also said that Lebanon is not part of the temporary ceasefire agreement, which seems to be a point of contention with Iran.
Declaring that the nearly six-week operation has “achieved and exceeded its core military objectives,” Leavitt acknowledged that ceasefires “are fragile by nature” and cautioned that a long-term truce to end the war would take time.
