U.S. President Donald Trump told the New York Post on April 20 that a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance, and including special envoy Steve Witkoff, and adviser Jared Kushner, has left the United States for Islamabad to prepare for meetings with Iranian negotiators, even has Iranian officials have been indicating thatt they won’t be there.
“So far, we have not made any decisions regarding the next round of negotiations,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said this morning, reported Tasnim. Baqaei criticized the U.S. for engaging in actions that contradict its claims of pursuing diplomacy, adding that from the very beginning of the ceasefire, Iran had faced “bad faith and constant complaints” from Washington.
Baqaei added that even after an understanding was reached, Iran encountered “maritime actions in the Strait of Hormuz,” including a U.S. attack on an Iranian trade vessel on Sunday night April 19, which he described as a violation of the ceasefire and “an act of aggression.” He stressed that the U.S. behavior does not align with its rhetoric, saying the inconsistency only deepens Iran’s mistrust toward the entire process. “Iran will make the necessary decisions about the future path with careful consideration of its national interests,” he said.
Trump, however, went so far as to suggest openness to a meeting with the Iranian leadership. “I have no problem meeting them,” he said. “If they want to meet, and we have some very capable people, but I have no problem meeting them.”
At the same time Trump remains obsessed with the idea that Iran has nuclear weapons. “Get rid of their nuclear weapons. That’s all very simple,” he said. “There will be no nuclear weapon.” The U.S. intelligence assessment has been since 2007 that Iran suspended its development of nuclear weapons in 2003, an assessment that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard repeated to the Senate Intelligence Committee in March 2025.
In any case, the Iranians responded to Trump’s claim about a meeting in Islamabad by reiterating that they’re not going.
“While U.S. President Donald Trump has said that Vice President JD Vance and other members of the American negotiating team are on their way to Pakistan, so far, there has been no change in Iran’s stance on not taking part in the talks,” Tasnim News reported. “Information received by Tansim’s correspondent indicates that the issue of the naval blockade is a very fundamental obstacle in the way of the talks and this issue has been conveyed to the Pakistani mediator, with the Pakistani mediator saying today that he had discussed the issue with Trump.”
This comes after Reuters reported this morning, citing an unnamed security source, that army chief Asim Munir told Trump in a phone call that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports was a hurdle to the resumption of peace talks between the U.S. and Iran. Trump told Munir he would consider his advice, according to the source. The source also said Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif had contacted Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian to ask him to send a delegation to talks in Pakistan, but Pezeshkian had said Iran would not do so until the blockade was lifted.
Also this morning, The Hill quoted Trump, when asked about Iran’s view on the blockade, saying that Munir, “didn’t recommend anything on the blockade. The blockade is very powerful, very strong. They lose $500 million a day with the blockade up. We control it. They don’t control it.”
