A fresh round of in-person peace talks between the United States and Iran could happen as early as this week, according to Misryoum newsroom reporting. The idea is still moving through channels, but it’s being treated—at least by people close to the negotiations—as something that could arrive quickly rather than drift for months.
The latest push comes after talks led by Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan over the weekend ended without a peace agreement to end the war. Even so, both Vance and President Donald Trump projected a kind of cautious optimism on Monday, while the U.S. forces launched a blockade barring ships from entering or exiting Iranian ports. That contrast—talking and tightening pressure at the same time—has become part of the background noise around this diplomacy, the kind you can almost feel in the air when you’re watching from far away.
In Misryoum newsroom reporting, one of the people familiar with the ongoing negotiations said opening the Strait of Hormuz for a free flow of shipping is a major sticking point in any agreement. The second person said Iran’s nuclear capability is another. During the marathon talks in Islamabad that failed over the weekend, the U.S. asked Iran for a 20-year suspension of uranium enrichment. The Iranians agreed to three to five years—something Trump has said is not acceptable. And then there’s the more technical part, which somehow still feels like a line in the sand.
The U.S. also asked Iran to remove highly enriched uranium from the country. Iran, in turn, agreed to a “monitored process of down blending,” described by the second person familiar with the ongoing negotiations as mixing more dangerous, highly-enriched uranium with natural or less potent uranium to create a less potent material. A U.S. official told Misryoum newsroom that there is continued engagement between the U.S. and Iran and forward motion on trying to get to an agreement. So the talks may not be “back on” in a clean, simple way—more like they never really left, even when the weekend ended in failure.
Speaking after the Pakistan talks, Vance said there had been some “good conversations” with Tehran during the weekend discussions in the Pakistani capital. When asked whether more negotiations might follow, he said the question would be “best put to the Iranians, because the ball really is in their court.” He added that there was a “grand deal to be had,” but it was up to Tehran to “take the next step.”
Vance also framed the core sticking point as enrichment. “We must have the enriched material out of Iran,” he said, adding that the U.S. needs Tehran’s “conclusive commitment to not develop a nuclear weapon.” He said Tehran showed some flexibility over the weekend, but “didn’t move far enough.” If fresh talks do come, his message was blunt: if the Iranians meet the U.S. there, “this can be a very, very good deal for both countries.” If not—well, that would become “up to them,” as he put it.
Outside the bargaining room, the pressure and the risk keep layering up. Iran’s armed forces accused the U.S. of “piracy” with the blockade and threatened ports across the Gulf if its own were hit. Still, despite the possibility of an intensifying standoff over Hormuz, the 2-week ceasefire in the conflict seemed to be holding. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency has estimated that Iran has nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough for eleven
nuclear weapons; Tehran maintains that its highly enriched uranium is still buried underground after U.S. airstrikes targeting enrichment facilities last year, and insists its program is peaceful. In Tehran on Monday, Misryoum editorial desk noted that people looked at portraits of victims displayed in an airstrike on a residential building near where they were shown—one of those grim details that makes diplomacy feel almost unreal. And in Washington, Israel and Lebanon were holding rare direct
talks on Tuesday aimed at defusing another flashpoint that threatened the deal—because, as usual, the world doesn’t wait neatly for one agreement before creating the next problem.
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