Iran and the United States were moving closer this Wednesday to hold a new meeting and even seal the extension of the 15-day ceasefire designed to accompany the peace talks and whose end was dangerously approaching (next Wednesday) with the dialogue at a standstill, according to regional sources cited by the Associated Press agency. The White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, denied, however, that the United States had “formally” requested an extension of the ceasefire, and said Washington continues to be “actively engaged in negotiations.”
“We are optimistic about the prospects of a deal, as the president [Donald Trump] said in his interview yesterday [Tuesday],” Leavitt said. In it, Trump assured that the war is “close to ending” and that Tehran seeks to reach an agreement quickly.
While the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has neither confirmed nor denied the rapprochements, alarms have been sounding for days since the first and only day of dialogue last weekend ended abruptly without agreement or a date for the next one, although no one considers the truce dead and Pakistan, the mediator, is trying to organize another meeting soon.
What most endangers the ceasefire is the escalation — both rhetorical and in fact — around the Strait of Hormuz, where Washington, which has just announced the deployment of more soldiers, has been enforcing its own blockade since Monday, adding to Tehran’s blockade since the United States and Israel began the war on February 28. This Wednesday, Ali Abdolahi, commander of the Central Headquarters, the joint command that makes military decisions, threatened to prevent trade (“no type of export or import,” he specified) in the Gulf and the Oman and Red Seas if U.S. forces maintain the blockade.
Abdolahi described Washington’s new naval siege of Iranian commercial and oil tankers as an “illegal action” that violates the ceasefire. And, within the framework of the propaganda war, Tehran announced that another of its oil tankers crossed the Strait toward the Iranian port of Bandar-e Imam Jomeyni despite the blockade, according to the Fars news agency, linked to the regime. It is a large vessel, sanctioned by Washington and capable of transporting two million barrels of crude oil, although the agency does not specify whether it was returning loaded or empty. It adds to the three tankers linked to Chinese and Iranian interests — two of them also sanctioned by Washington — that managed to cross the Gulf maritime passage the day before.
More than 10,000 soldiers enforce the blockade, in which the United States threatens to destroy any type of fast Iranian vessel that approaches its military ships. Central Command, which directs military operations in the Middle East, sent a message on Monday to ships in the area warning that they will be “intercepted, diverted, or captured” if they cross the blocked zone without authorization, except to go to non-Iranian ports.
The Washington Post reported this Wednesday that the Pentagon has mobilized approximately 6,000 soldiers aboard the USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier and several escort warships. Another 4,200 troops, belonging to the Boxer Amphibious Group and its embarked Marine Infantry operational force, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are expected to arrive by the end of the month, according to anonymous sources cited by the Post. These forces will join the more than 50,000 personnel who, according to the Pentagon, are involved in the war against Iran, numbers still far from those deployed in Afghanistan (more than 100,000 soldiers) and Iraq (160,000).
Despite the negotiation paralysis, the standoff around Hormuz, and the constant Israeli bombings in Lebanon (35 dead the day before, 17 so far on Thursday, of whom four were paramedics), both the mediator, Pakistan, and Iran and the United States agree that the Friday meeting in Islamabad generated progress but stalled on the nuclear issue, which Trump defined as the most relevant.
According to later leaks, U.S. negotiators insisted on a 20-year moratorium; the Iranians offered five, willing to agree on another figure if it was a “single digit,” and the former walked away from the table: they felt Tehran was trying to haggle over what their leader, Vice President J. D. Vance, had publicly defined as their “best and final offer.”
New meeting
Whether or not it was final, it does not seem, in any case, that the opportunities to explore it ended. Trump spoke this Tuesday of a new meeting in Islamabad this Wednesday or Thursday. It seems unlikely because it has not yet been confirmed and because Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, is scheduled to leave the country this Wednesday and not return until Saturday. Islamabad seeks to hold it anyway in the coming days. An anonymous diplomatic source told Efe that a meeting for this Thursday or Friday was ruled out, and that, therefore, it will be necessary to wait until next week to resume negotiations.
The President of the United States also indicated that he asked his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, not to give weapons to Iran and that he responded that “essentially, he was not doing so.” “I had heard that China is supplying weapons to Iran; that is, it is seen everywhere,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, referring to reports in U.S. media that Beijing is preparing to send advanced weaponry to Iran. After that televised interview, Trump posted a message on his social network, Truth, in which he assured that Xi had promised him that Beijing would not arm Tehran. The Republican also spoke of a letter exchange with his Chinese counterpart, whom he plans to visit in the coming weeks.
According to an investigation published this Wednesday by Financial Times, China secretly provided the Iranians in 2024 with a spy satellite that they used during the current war to attack U.S. military bases throughout the Middle East, as reflected in lists of coordinates, satellite images, and orbital analyses.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, where Israel refuses to apply the ceasefire and its troops surround a symbolic southern municipality for Hezbollah, Bint Jbeil, the first direct diplomatic meeting in decades with the Israeli government still reverberates, held the day before at the U.S. State Department, with the presence of Marco Rubio, and criticized by Hezbollah, the Shiite party-militia allied with Tehran.
Hasan Fadlala, a member of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, reproached the Beirut government for its interview with the “enemy” without achieving a single demand (such as the ceasefire), only “praise.” “Does the government not realize the danger of what it has undertaken? And does it understand that it has taken a wrong path that only leads to increasing division among the Lebanese?” he said in a televised statement.
