President Donald Trump abruptly canceled plans for U.S. envoys to travel to Pakistan for peace talks with Iran on Saturday, throwing the latest round of negotiations aimed at ending the war in doubt.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, were due to travel to Islamabad for talks with Iranian leaders later Saturday, but Trump called them off at the last minute, blaming “infighting” among Iran’s leadership.
“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them.”
“Also, we have all the cards,” he wrote.
He reiterated that point when speaking to reporters in West Palm Beach on Saturday before boarding Air Force One.
“We have all the cards. We’re not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time, going back and forth, to be given a document that was not good enough,” he said, adding that Iran could just “call” the U.S.
The news comes a day after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president directed the duo to fly to Pakistan for in-person talks as the conflict nears two months, and a tentative cease-fire was extended by Trump this past week. Leavitt said there had been some progress with the Iranians in recent days and the Administration had been hoping for further movement after Witkoff and Kushner’s meetings.
But hours before they were due to depart, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left Islamabad for Oman after negotiating for almost a full day with Pakistani officials, who have become unlikely peace brokers between the two sides in the war.
He said in a post on X after leaving that Iran has “yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy.”
Trump’s cancellation of the trip is the second time in a week he has called off a planned trip by U.S. officials. Vice President J.D. Vance was expected to travel to Islamabad earlier this week, but the trip was canceled at the last minute.
Meanwhile, Israel has continued its assault on southern Lebanon, intensifying on Saturday with two raids in the Nabatieh district and killing four people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he had instructed the military to carry out “powerful strikes” against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, despite a cease-fire being in place.
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed
Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has become central to the negotiations aimed at ending the war. Iran has effectively closed the Strait, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flowed before the fighting began, allowing only its allies to traverse the vital waterway, and others if they paid a toll. The U.S. has since imposed its own blockade on all traffic in an attempt to pressure Iran to open the Strait.
Shipping data on Friday shows that just five ships sailed through the Strait, a far cry from the more than 130 ships that would pass through before the war began on Feb. 28. The Strait’s closure has caused a global energy crisis and a wave of fuel rationing.
Oil prices have risen by more than 11% in the past week as diplomacy has failed to end the conflict, and Brent crude futures rose to more than $105 a barrel in early trading on Friday.
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