Pakistan was a witness last week of the first high-level encounter between the United States and Iran in more than four decades and since January 1979 when the former shah of Iran had no option but to abandon the reins of power in Tehran and be replaced by an authoritarian theocracy hostile to the United States.
The first round of the negotiations between the American and Iranian delegations hosted by the Pakistani government concluded without an agreement on the terms to end the US-Israeli war on Iran that was launched on 28 February at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This result should not come as a surprise. The degree of distrust between the two countries is so deep that overcoming it would have been very difficult to achieve in just 21 hours, the time the negotiations lasted in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
The fact that US Vice-President J D Vance headed the American delegation to the Islamabad talks testifies to the great importance that US President Donald Trump and his administration attach to ending the six-week war on Iran and to exploring the possibilities of resetting American-Iranian relations in anticipation of the post-war Middle East.
It is ironic that a war initiated by the Israelis to trigger “state collapse” in Iran should be the cause of such a reset, which will undoubtedly take some time to materialise. The first step on the road to this was taken in Islamabad.
The absence of an agreement in the talks was considered by some as a failure, but according to declarations and statements by Trump and Vance, on the one hand, and statements by Iranian officials, on the other, the negotiations reached certain agreements in principle on points that are supposedly difficult to surmount, like for instance the right of Iran to enrich uranium.
There was also the question of the 970 pounds of 60 per cent enriched uranium that Iran produced in the period after the United States, during Trump’s first term in office from 2017 to 2020, withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA ), the five plus one agreement (the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran in 2015.
It should be noted that the American withdrawal from this historic agreement also came at the urging of Netanyahu.
The prospect of resuming negotiations between Washington and Tehran should not be ruled out even if Trump decides to resume, on a small scale, the aerial bombing of military targets in Iran. With mid-term elections in the US looming in November, he will likely think twice about resuming military operations on a scale and intensity similar to those that took place between 28 February and the announcement of the two-week ceasefire agreement.
Renewing the ceasefire for another two weeks or more would signal a political will on the part of the Americans and the Iranians that the chapter of the six-week war should now be closed, regardless of the calculations of the war-mongering Netanyahu.
In the meantime, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the US Navy will enforce a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that this blockade will take effect at 2 pm GMT on 13 April. According to Trump, passage through the strait will then be supervised by the US Navy, the objective being to blockade Iranian seaports.
If the Iranians consider this decision to be in breach of the ceasefire agreement, hardly anyone will fault them. But this is the way in which Trump’s White House is exercising pressure on Iran to make it yield to American demands.
I doubt if Iran will oblige. It has threatened to target ports around the Gulf if the US blockade takes place. In the meantime, hundreds of oil tankers have been rerouted to the Gulf of Mexico to load up with US oil to take it to various destinations around the world in order to make up for the dearth of Gulf oil available on international markets.
The American oil giants are profiting handsomely. Their stock price is increasing while petrol prices at the pump for average Americans have reached $4 a gallon.
If the US administration seriously enforces a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the harm will not be limited to Iran and will also affect the US economy. Perhaps it is for this reason that leading commentators in the United States have now concluded that Trump’s whole war strategy against Iran is a strategic failure.
Indeed, it is. The irony is that his salvation now lies in the hands of the Iranians. This dilemma should concentrate minds in Washington and force them to come to the belated realisation that the time has come to open a new chapter in American-Iranian relations.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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