Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey have taken the lead in efforts to broker a peace deal between the United States and Iran, serving as intermediaries in talks between Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to U.S. and foreign officials.
In a flurry of phone calls that began over the weekend and continued through Tuesday, senior officials from all three mediating countries appealed to both sides to end the war following President Donald Trump’s Saturday ultimatum giving Iran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of its energy infrastructure.
On Monday, Trump said he would extend the deadline for five days after what he said were high-level talks over the weekend with Iran that reached “points of major agreement.”
Officials from several governments knowledgeable about the diplomacy, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive negotiations, said the conversations so far were indirect through the mediators. Iran publicly insisted there were no direct or indirect conversations and it was uninterested in having them.
Speaking to reporters as he headed for an event in Memphis, Trump said, “we’ll at some point very, very soon, meet.” One proposed venue, several people familiar with the planning said, was Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, although they said no decision had yet been made.
Anadolu, Turkey’s state-run news agency, said late Monday in a report it attributed to Pakistani Foreign Ministry officials that a U.S. delegation was expected to arrive in Pakistan “in a day or two.” The Pakistani Embassy in Washington, closed for a national holiday, could not be reached for comment.
Asked about a U.S.-Iran meeting, possibly as soon as the end of this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt cited the sensitivity of the “diplomatic discussions,” and added that “this is a fluid situation and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House.”
Previous efforts headed by Qatar and Oman to discuss a ceasefire failed to gain traction when Washington rejected Tehran’s demand that attacks by the U.S. and Israel halt before talks could begin.
Iranian officials have also previously demanded assurances, including compensation for war damage, and rejected U.S. demands that it commit to cease all enrichment, hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sharply curtail its ballistic missile program and end all support for militant proxy forces in the region.
Qatar and Oman are not directly participating in the new rounds of discussions, while Pakistan — a relatively new player — has taken on a prominent role along with Egypt and Turkey.
The foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia met in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Thursday on the sidelines of a summit of Islamic countries. Amid a roiling Middle East and conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ankara has been seeking a long-term security pact with Islamabad and Riyadh — which it hopes would also include Cairo. Pakistan has been steadily strengthening its ties with the Middle East and last year signed a mutual defense pact with the Saudis.
“We are exploring how, as countries with a certain degree of influence in the region, we can combine our strengths to solve problems,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saturday.
As Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf countries continued, traffic through the crucial Strait of Hormuz remained closed except for those ships with Iranian permission. The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry reported its air defenses engaged with five ballistic missiles and 17 drones Tuesday.
On Sunday evening, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry announced that “amid concerns that the situation in the region could slip out of control in light of the current dangerous escalation, a series of phone calls took place” that day. Participants, the ministry said, included Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, Fidan, Pakistani Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar, Araghchi and Witkoff.
Calls were also made to Qatar Prime Minister Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari confirmed Tuesday that “there is no direct Qatari effort regarding mediation between the two sides.” For now, Ansari said, “we are focused on defending our country and its sovereignty.”
On Sunday, Trump called Pakistan’s military chief of staff, Gen. Asim Munir, a White House official said.
Trump has taken an apparent liking to Pakistan, beginning last summer when he invited Munir to lunch at the White House a month after claiming to have “solved” a breakout of fighting between nuclear powers Pakistan and India. The next day, Pakistan’s civilian government announced it had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since then, he has repeatedly praised the government in Islamabad and Munir in particular.
On Monday, Pakistan said, Dar spoke with Araghchi as did Turkey’s Fidan, according to Turkish media. On Tuesday, Iranian media reported that President Masoud Pezeshkian and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had also spoken.
“Numerous messages have already been exchanged with the warring sides,” said a former Egyptian official familiar with the talks, adding that the “mediation has received a noticeable degree of acceptance” among the warring parties.
Noting that strikes from both sides are likely to continue “until negotiations can formally begin,” the former official said that “the expectation is to move from a phase of reciprocal military strikes to de-escalation, then to calm, followed by a complete end to the war and ultimately toward negotiations that yield positive and mutually satisfactory outcomes, ensuring that such a conflict does not recur.”
The war, now in its fourth week, has left significantly fewer Iranian officials for the Trump administration or mediators to engage with. In addition to Israeli strikes that killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a number of other senior officials, a strike last week killed Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who in previous years held back-channel talks with the U.S.
Trump noted Monday that “we blew up” three successive rounds of Iranian leadership in the past several weeks “but they do have some leaders left.”
Araghchi and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, are among the few remaining in senior roles. Ghalibaf would make sense for engagement, according to a European official who said that while the speaker was not as “pragmatic” as Larijani, he has the power and influence necessary to discuss a possible ceasefire. Ghalibaf on Monday publicly denied media reports that he was involved in any talks.
Araghchi, a longtime diplomat, headed Iran’s negotiating team in indirect talks with Witkoff last summer and, along with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, in two abortive sessions earlier this year until the war began.
Meanwhile, both sides claimed to be winning the war.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes have decreased but continue throughout the region amid reports of declining U.S. weapons stocks and air defense munitions. But weeks of intense U.S. and Israeli airstrikes numbering in the tens of thousands have had a devastating impact on the Iranian military, destroying missile launchers and defenses, weapons manufacturing and storage sites.
“The Iranians have been stripped of almost all their military capabilities except drones, and those aren’t enough to tip the strategic balance,” said Joel Rayburn, who served as a senior White House official on Iran in Trump’s first administration. “We are seeing Iranian weakness exposed in real time.”
Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
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