Tehran says no one had expectation of reaching agreement with US in one session

TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry said no one had held any expectation that talks with the United States could have reached an agreement within one session after the negotiations in Islamabad stalled on Sunday.

“Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. No one had such an expectation,” ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.

He said Tehran was “confident that contacts between us and Pakistan, as well as our other friends in the region, will continue”.

US Vice President JD Vance ​said on Sunday that his negotiating team was leaving Pakistan after not reaching a deal with Iran following 21 hours of Islamabad Talks, jeopardizing a fragile two-week ceasefire.

“The bad ‌news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America,” Vance told reporters after the talks ended. “So, we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We’ve made very clear what our red lines are.”

Vance cited shortcomings in the talks and said Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including ​to not build nuclear weapons.

“We need to ​see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to ⁠quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency ​said that “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement and that negotiations had ended. Before Vance spoke, Iran’s government in a post on X had said negotiations would continue and technical experts ​from both sides would exchange documents.