Strait of Hormuz Remains ‘Sticking Point’ as Marathon Vance-Iran Talks Pause After 15 Hours

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

Hopefully they had plenty of coffee.

Vice President JD Vance’s negotiations with top Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistan turned into a marathon session that stretched past the 15-hour mark, with both sides discussing a deal to end the Iran war into the early hours of Sunday local time.

Around 8:15 p.m. ET — or 5:15 a.m. in Pakistan — the meeting was finally paused, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal talks are expected to resume later on Sunday.

The New York Times reported the seemingly never-ending meeting “suggested the two sides remained engaged and still had topics to discuss.” But the outlet said the Strait of Hormuz remains a “sticking point,” according to two unnamed senior Iranian officials who spoke to the paper.

Vance led negotiations for Donald Trump in Pakistan and was flanked by special envoy Steve Witkoff and the presidents adviser/son-in-law Jared Kushner; both Witkoff and Kushner played key roles in negotiating the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal last year. Vance became the highest-ranking American politician to meet with Iranian leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

On Iran’s side, The Times reported Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, were spearheading negotiations for the country’s theocratic regime.

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.

“The Defense Department said on Saturday that two U.S. warships crossed the Strait of Hormuz to begin an operation to clear mines from the critical waterway,” the NYT report said. “Iran denied the claim. Only a handful of ships have passed through the strait since the cease-fire began this week.”

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