JD Vance Shares ‘Bad News’ That US and Iran Couldn’t Reach a Deal in Pakistan: ‘They Have Chosen Not to Accept Our Terms’

Vice President JD Vance emerged from a marathon negotiating session with Iranian leaders around 6:30 a.m. in Islamabad, Pakistan on Sunday and told reporters the two sides have not reached a deal to end the war after Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.”

Vance — while flanked by special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner — said the “good news” was that the U.S. and Iran had “a number of substantive discussions” about ending the conflict.

“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement,” Vance continued. “And I think that’s bad news for Iran, much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America.”

He continued, “So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our redlines are, what things we’re willing to accommodate them on, and what things we’re not willing to accommodate them on — and we’ve made that as clear as we possibly could. And they have chosen not to accept our terms.”

In particular, Vance said the U.S. required an “affirmative commitment” that Iran would not seek a nuclear weapon. He told reporters that the trio of American representatives were “quite flexible” in what they were willing to do to get a deal done in Pakistan, but that Iran did not bring the same mentality.

“The president told us, you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal,” Vance said. “We did that, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to make any headway.”

Vance spoke to reporters shortly after wrapping up what was reported as a 15-hour meeting; the vice president said it was even longer than that, saying it went on for 21 hours.

He gave kudos to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshall Syed Asim Munir for coordinating the summit, saying “whatever shortcomings” there were in meeting were not due to them.

The American delegation met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament; Vance became the highest-ranking American politician to meet face-to-face with leaders from Iran’s theocratic regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The New York Times reported shortly before the meeting concluded that opening the Strait of Hormuz remains a “sticking point,” according to two unnamed senior Iranian officials who spoke to the paper.

Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday afternoon he was not too concerned with how the negotiations were going.

“I’m getting a lot of reports. They’ve been meeting for many hours, as you probably have noticed,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. Look, regardless, we win. Regardless what happens, we win. We’ve totally defeated that country, and so let’s see what happens. Maybe they make a deal, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. From the standpoint of America, we win.”

The meeting comes a few days after Trump halted his planned attacks on Iranian bridges and power plants about 90 minutes before his Tuesday night deadline. The two sides agreed to a two-week ceasefire, and Vance flew to Pakistan to try and hammer out a deal.

Trump proclaimed a “golden age” for the Middle East could be on the horizon soon after the ceasefire was announced, and said the U.S. would be “hangin’ around” to make sure the Strait of Hormuz remained open. But the Strait remained a choke point, even after the deal was agreed to.

Watch above via CNN.

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