White House plans to send Kushner, Witkoff for possible Iran talks in Islamabad; Vance on standby
The White House said Friday it plans to send Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad for potential talks with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, even as Pakistani officials said no U.S.-Iran meeting was scheduled in the Pakistani capital.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the pair would depart Saturday morning and that Washington has seen some progress from Tehran in recent days, with hopes for more over the weekend. Araqchi was expected in Islamabad on Friday to discuss proposals for restarting peace talks with the United States.
Two Pakistani government sources said his visit would be brief and focused on Iran’s ideas for talks, which mediator Pakistan would then convey to Washington, and that he was not due to meet U.S. negotiators. Islamabad hosted U.S.-Iran talks that collapsed earlier this week; a round expected to resume Tuesday never took place, with Iran saying it was not yet ready to commit to attending and a U.S.
delegation led by Vice President JD Vance never leaving Washington. Pakistani sources said a U.S. logistics and security team is already in place in Islamabad for potential talks. Leavitt said Vance, who earlier this month led a first round of unsuccessful talks to end the war, is ready to travel to Pakistan if negotiations this weekend prove successful.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday unilaterally extended a two-week ceasefire at the last moment to allow more time to reconvene negotiators. Araqchi wrote on X that he was visiting Pakistan, Oman and Russia to coordinate with partners on bilateral matters and consult on regional developments, adding that Iran’s neighbors remained Tehran’s priority.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson later told state media the tour would include consultations on the latest efforts to end the war. Reports on Araqchi’s trip in Iranian state media and the Pakistani sources made no mention of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, who led Iran’s delegation at talks earlier this month.
The Iranian parliament’s media office denied a report that Qalibaf had resigned as head of Iran’s negotiating team and said there was no new round of talks scheduled yet. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier Friday that Iran had a chance to make a “good deal” with the United States.
“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely… at the negotiating table. All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways,” he said. Oil prices were volatile Friday as traders weighed the prospect of further talks against potential disruption from what the article described as the worst oil shock in history.
Brent crude futures were down 0.9% at $104.11, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate fell 2.8% to $93.20. Separately, Israel and Lebanon extended a ceasefire for three weeks on Thursday at a White House meeting brokered by Trump.
The war in Lebanon, which began after Israel invaded last month to root out Iran’s Hezbollah allies following cross-border fire, has run in parallel with the wider Iran war, and Tehran says a ceasefire there is a precondition for talks. Fighting persisted in southern Lebanon, with Lebanese authorities reporting two people killed by an Israeli strike and Hezbollah saying it downed an Israeli drone.
While the ceasefire in place since April 16 has significantly reduced hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in the south, where Israel has kept soldiers in a self-declared buffer zone. Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said the truce was meaningless in light of what he described as Israel’s ongoing hostile acts, including assassinations, shelling and gunfire.
The weekend will test whether Washington and Tehran can move from proposals to a negotiating table. Pakistan is poised to relay Iran’s ideas to the United States, and the White House has positioned envoys—and potentially the vice president—to join if momentum materializes.