US and Iran signal new ceasefire talks in Islamabad as truce nears end

The Unit­ed States and Iran have sig­naled they will hold a new round of cease­fire talks in Pak­istan, two re­gion­al of­fi­cials said Tues­day, as lead­ers on both sides warned they were pre­pared for more fight­ing if a frag­ile two-week truce ex­pires with­out a deal.

Nei­ther the U.S. nor Iran has pub­licly con­firmed the tim­ing of the talks in Is­lam­abad, with Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion deny­ing any of­fi­cial was al­ready in Pak­istan’s cap­i­tal.

Pak­istan-led me­di­a­tors re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion that the top ne­go­tia­tors, U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance and Iran’s par­lia­ment speak­er Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf, will ar­rive in Is­lam­abad ear­ly Wednes­day to lead their teams in the talks, the re­gion­al of­fi­cials told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to brief re­porters.

A cease­fire that be­gan April 8 was set to ex­pire Wednes­day.

Both sides re­main dug in rhetor­i­cal­ly. U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has warned that “lots of bombs” will “start go­ing off” if there’s no agree­ment be­fore the cease­fire dead­line, and Iran’s chief ne­go­tia­tor said that Tehran has “new cards on the bat­tle­field” that haven’t yet been re­vealed.

The cease­fire seemed like­ly to be ex­tend­ed if talks re­sume. White House of­fi­cials have said that Vance would lead the Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion, but Iran hasn’t said who it might send. Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion on Tues­day broad­cast a mes­sage say­ing that “no del­e­ga­tion from Iran has vis­it­ed Is­lam­abad … so far.”

Iran­ian state TV long has been con­trolled by hard-lin­ers with­in Iran’s theoc­ra­cy. The on-screen alert like­ly re­flects the on­go­ing in­ter­nal de­bate with­in Iran’s theoc­ra­cy as it weighs how to re­spond to the U.S. Navy’s seizure of an Iran­ian con­tain­er ship over the week­end.

US says its forces board sanc­tioned oil tanker

On Tues­day, the U.S. said its forces board­ed an oil tanker pre­vi­ous­ly sanc­tioned for smug­gling Iran­ian crude oil in Asia. The Pen­ta­gon said in a so­cial me­dia post that U.S. forces board­ed the M/T Tifani “with­out in­ci­dent.”

The U.S. mil­i­tary did not say where the ves­sel had been board­ed, though ship-track­ing da­ta showed the Tifani in the In­di­an Ocean be­tween Sri Lan­ka and In­done­sia on Tues­day.

The state­ment added that “in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters are not a refuge for sanc­tioned ves­sels.”

The U.S. mil­i­tary on Sun­day seized an Iran­ian car­go ves­sel, the first in­ter­cep­tion un­der block­ade of Iran­ian ports. Iran’s joint mil­i­tary com­mand called the armed board­ing an act of pira­cy and a vi­o­la­tion of the cease­fire.

Strait of Hor­muz con­trol key to ne­go­ti­a­tions

The U.S. im­posed the block­ade to pres­sure Tehran in­to end­ing its stran­gle­hold on the Strait of Hor­muz, a key ship­ping lane through which 20% of the world’s nat­ur­al gas and crude oil tran­sits in peace­time.

Iran’s grip on the strait has sent oil prices soar­ing. Brent crude, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, was trad­ing at close to $95 per bar­rel on Tues­day, up more than 30% from Feb. 28, the day that Is­rael and the U.S. at­tacked Iran to start the war.

Be­fore the war be­gan, the Strait of Hor­muz had been ful­ly open to in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping. Trump has de­mand­ed that ves­sels again be al­lowed to tran­sit unim­ped­ed through the wa­ter­way.

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Eu­ro­pean Union trans­porta­tion min­is­ters were meet­ing in Brus­sels on Tues­day to dis­cuss how to pro­tect con­sumers af­ter the head of the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency warned that Eu­rope has “ maybe six weeks ” of jet fu­el sup­plies re­main­ing.

Over the week­end, Iran said that it had re­ceived new pro­pos­als from Wash­ing­ton, but al­so sug­gest­ed that a wide gap re­mains be­tween the sides. Is­sues that de­railed the last round of ne­go­ti­a­tions in­clud­ed Iran’s nu­clear en­rich­ment pro­gram, its re­gion­al prox­ies and the strait.

Qal­ibaf on Tues­day ac­cused the Unit­ed States of want­i­ng Iran to sur­ren­der. He said that, on the con­trary, Iran has been prepar­ing “to re­veal new cards on the bat­tle­field.”

“We do not ac­cept ne­go­ti­a­tions un­der the shad­ow of threats,” he wrote in an X post.

Pak­istan hope­ful talks will pro­ceed

Pak­istani of­fi­cials have ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Iran will al­so send a del­e­ga­tion for more talks.

Pak­istani For­eign Min­is­ter Ishaq Dar met with the am­bas­sador from Chi­na, which is a key trad­ing part­ner with Iran, while the For­eign Min­istry in Bei­jing said the con­flict was at a “crit­i­cal stage of tran­si­tion be­tween war and peace.”

Se­cu­ri­ty has been tight­ened across Pak­istan’s cap­i­tal, where au­thor­i­ties have de­ployed thou­sands of per­son­nel and in­creased pa­trols along routes lead­ing to the air­port.

The arrange­ments ap­pear stricter than those put in place dur­ing the first round of talks held in Is­lam­abad on April 11 and 12, sug­gest­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of high-lev­el par­tic­i­pa­tion, if ne­go­ti­a­tions make progress, said Syed Mo­ham­mad Ali, an Is­lam­abad-based se­cu­ri­ty an­a­lyst.

His­toric Is­rael-Lebanon talks al­so set to re­sume

Mean­while, his­toric diplo­mat­ic talks be­tween Is­rael and Lebanon were set to re­sume on Thurs­day in Wash­ing­ton, an Is­raeli, a Lebanese and a U.S. of­fi­cial said. All three spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the be­hind-the-scenes ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The Is­raeli and Lebanese am­bas­sadors met last week for the first di­rect diplo­mat­ic talks in decades. Is­rael says the talks are aimed at dis­arm­ing Hezbol­lah and reach­ing a peace agree­ment with Lebanon.

A 10-day cease­fire be­gan on Fri­day in Lebanon, where fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Iran­ian-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants broke out two days af­ter the U.S. and Is­rael launched joint strikes on Iran to start the war. Fight­ing in Lebanon has killed more than 2,290 peo­ple.

Since the war start­ed, at least 3,375 peo­ple have been killed in Iran, 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.

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo and Gam­brell from Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates. David Ris­ing and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok; Sam Mc­Neil in Brus­sels and Russ Bynum in Sa­van­nah, Geor­gia, con­tributed to this sto­ry.

By MU­NIR AHMED, JON GAM­BRELL and SAMY MAGDY

IS­LAM­ABAD (AP)