Trump dispatches Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan for new talks with Iran’s foreign minister

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is send­ing his en­voys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kush­n­er to Pak­istan to meet with Iran’s for­eign min­is­ter, the White House said Fri­day, as of­fi­cials in the South Asian na­tion pushed to re­vive cease­fire talks be­tween the U.S. and Iran.

The talks planned for Sat­ur­day come as much of the world is on edge over a war that has snarled cru­cial en­er­gy ex­ports through the Strait of Hor­muz, cloud­ed the glob­al eco­nom­ic pic­ture and left thou­sands of dead across the Mid­dle East.

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi ar­rived in Is­lam­abad late Fri­day. Ear­li­er on so­cial me­dia, he wrote that he was trav­el­ing to Pak­istan on a trip fo­cused on “bi­lat­er­al mat­ters and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ments.” He didn’t spec­i­fy who he would meet.

White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt said in an in­ter­view on Fox News Chan­nel that Witkoff and Kush­n­er would meet with Araghchi.

“We’re hope­ful that it will be a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion and hope­ful­ly move the ball for­ward to a deal,” Leav­itt said.

She said Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance would not trav­el but that he re­mains “deeply in­volved,” and would be will­ing to go to Pak­istan “if we feel it’s a nec­es­sary use of his time.”

Vance, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and the pres­i­dent’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty team are on “stand­by” to fly to Pak­istan if need­ed, Leav­itt said.

Araghchi and the two Trump en­voys held hours of in­di­rect talks in Gene­va on Feb. 27 over Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram but walked away with­out a deal. The next day, Is­rael and the Unit­ed States start­ed the war against Iran.

Leav­itt said the pres­i­dent de­cid­ed to send Witkoff and Kush­n­er to Pak­istan “to hear the Ira­ni­ans out.”

“We’ve cer­tain­ly seen some progress from the Iran­ian side in the last cou­ple of days,” Leav­itt said. She did not of­fer any de­tails about what U.S. of­fi­cials were hear­ing.

Is­lam­abad has sought to rein­ject mo­men­tum in­to the ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Iran and the Unit­ed States, which did not re­sume this week as had been ex­pect­ed.

Trump ex­tends the Jones Act waiv­er for 90 days

Sep­a­rate­ly Fri­day, the White House said Trump is­sued a 90-day ex­ten­sion to the Jones Act waiv­er, mak­ing it eas­i­er for non-Amer­i­can ves­sels to trans­port oil and nat­ur­al gas.

He first an­nounced a 60-day waiv­er in March in a move in­tend­ed to sta­bi­lize en­er­gy prices and ease oil and gas ship­ments to the U.S. fol­low­ing the ef­fec­tive clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz.

“New da­ta com­piled since the ini­tial waiv­er was is­sued re­vealed that sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sup­ply was able to reach U.S. ports faster,” the White House post on so­cial me­dia said.

The price of Brent crude oil, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, re­treat­ed on the news, vac­il­lat­ing be­tween $103 a bar­rel and more than $107 — still ear­ly 50% high­er than where it was on Feb. 28, when the war be­gan.

The squeeze on ship­ments through the strait has rip­pled through glob­al mar­itime trade flows, in­clud­ing through the Pana­ma Canal near­ly halfway around the world.

Pak­istan forges ahead with diplo­mat­ic ef­forts

Pak­istan has been try­ing to get U.S. and Iran­ian of­fi­cials back to the ta­ble af­ter Trump this week an­nounced an in­def­i­nite ex­ten­sion of the cease­fire with Iran, ho­n­our­ing Is­lam­abad’s re­quest for more time for diplo­mat­ic out­reach.

That hasn’t low­ered ten­sions in the strait, a strate­gic wa­ter­way through which a fifth of the world’s oil and nat­ur­al gas is shipped dur­ing peace­time.

Iran has kept its stran­gle­hold on traf­fic through the strait, at­tack­ing three ships ear­li­er this week, while the U.S. is main­tain­ing a block­ade on Iran­ian ports and Trump has or­dered the mil­i­tary to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be plac­ing mines.

“Iran has an im­por­tant choice, a chance to make a deal, a good deal, a wise deal,” U.S. De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth told re­porters on Fri­day. He said a sec­ond U.S. air­craft car­ri­er will join the block­ade in a few days.

Wash­ing­ton al­ready has three air­craft car­ri­ers in the re­gion; the USS George H.W. Bush in the In­di­an Ocean; the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln in the Ara­bi­an Sea; and the USS Ger­ald R. Ford in the Red Sea.

It is the first time since 2003 that three Amer­i­can car­ri­ers have been op­er­at­ing in the re­gion si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. The force in­cludes 200 air­craft and 15,000 sailors and Marines, U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand said.

A grow­ing toll even as cease­fires hold

Since the war be­gan, at least 3,375 peo­ple have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,490 peo­ple in Lebanon, where new fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and the Iran-backed mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah broke out two days af­ter the war start­ed, ac­cord­ing to au­thor­i­ties.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 23 peo­ple have died in Is­rael and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fif­teen Is­raeli sol­diers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. ser­vice mem­bers through­out the re­gion have been killed.

The U.N. peace­keep­ing force in south­ern Lebanon has al­so sus­tained ca­su­al­ties. UNIFIL said Fri­day that an In­done­sian peace­keep­er died of wounds sus­tained in an at­tack on his base on March 29, rais­ing to six — four In­done­sians and two French — the num­ber of force mem­bers killed since the war erupt­ed.

Ten­sions linger in Lebanon de­spite ex­tend­ed truce

The sit­u­a­tion in Lebanon re­mained tense a day af­ter Trump an­nounced Is­rael and Lebanon had agreed to ex­tend a cease­fire be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah by three weeks. Hezbol­lah has not par­tic­i­pat­ed in the diplo­ma­cy bro­kered by Wash­ing­ton.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, in a video state­ment re­leased by his of­fice on Fri­day, hailed “a process to achieve a his­toric peace be­tween Is­rael and Lebanon.”

Ear­li­er, the Is­raeli army asked res­i­dents of the south­ern Lebanese vil­lage of Deir Aames to evac­u­ate, say­ing Hezbol­lah was us­ing the vil­lage to launch at­tacks against Is­rael.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it downed a drone over Lebanon fol­low­ing the launch of a small sur­face-to-air mis­sile by Hezbol­lah. The mil­i­tant group, mean­while, said it shot down an Is­raeli drone with a sur­face-to-air mis­sile over the out­skirts of the south­ern port city of Tyre. —IS­LAM­ABAD (AP)

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Sto­ry by MU­NIR AHMED, JON GAM­BRELL and JAMEY KEAT­EN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Jon Gam­brell re­port­ed from Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, and Jamey Keat­en from Gene­va. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers David Ris­ing in Bangkok; Ko­ral Saeed in Abu Snan, Is­rael; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; and Aamer Mad­hani and Josh Boak in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed.