Alisa Odenheimer, Sherif Tarek and Eltaf Najafizada
Jerusalem/Cairo/London: US Vice President JD Vance has warned Tehran not to “play” the US as he departed for Islamabad for negotiations aimed at ending the war with Iran.
“We’re looking forward to the negotiations. I think it’s gonna be positive. We’ll, of course, see,” Vance said as he boarded Air Force Two on his way to Pakistan. “If they’re gonna try to play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Vance said US President Donald Trump had given them “some pretty clear guidelines” for the talks.
Trump has demanded Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, raising pressure on Tehran before the talks to turn a fragile ceasefire into lasting peace.
The truce remains shaky. Kuwait has reported large-scale drone attacks on “vital” facilities overnight into Friday and it has accused Iran and its proxy groups of violating the ceasefire announced by Washington and Tehran this week. The war has killed thousands of people and damaged energy infrastructure across the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
US and Iranian delegations are set to meet in Pakistan on Saturday, when shipping through Hormuz – which handled about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas before the war – will be a central sticking point.
“Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonourable, some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday (Washington time). “You’ll see Oil start flowing, with or without the help of Iran and, to me, it makes no difference, either way.”
The US president also warned Iran against charging fees on tankers going through Hormuz.
Traffic through the strategic waterway has come to a standstill since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 and there has been little sign of a meaningful pick-up since the truce began.
Lebanon, where Israel is fighting a parallel war against the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia, remains another flashpoint. Iran has said the US bears responsibility for halting the fighting there, while US officials say the country wasn’t part of the ceasefire accord.
Still, Trump said he was “optimistic” about a deal with Iran.
The US president described Iran’s leaders as “much more reasonable” than their public comments would suggest, in a phone interview with NBC News.
He also said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “going to low-key it” with airstrikes on Lebanon, after the two leaders spoke by phone on Wednesday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said the Israeli strikes in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants, are a “clear violation” of the ceasefire that will render the planned peace talks “meaningless”.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator, initially said the truce included Lebanon, before US and Israeli officials stated the opposite.
Netanyahu’s decision to open direct talks with Lebanon pushed down oil prices on Thursday, as the US agreed to host a meeting next week to discuss ongoing ceasefire negotiations involving Israel and Lebanon, according to a US State Department official.
But the Israeli leader also reiterated his position that the ongoing attacks in Lebanon were not part of the US-Iran ceasefire deal.
The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut, as shipowners await clarification on its status. Traffic is still a tiny fraction of pre-war levels, despite state media reporting that Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organisation had published two safe routes for shipping.
Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose father was killed in the early days of the war, said in a statement on Telegram that Iran “will definitely bring the management of the Strait of Hormuz to a new stage”, though it was unclear whether he was referring to previous Iranian demands to retain control of the waterway that the US has rejected.
Khamenei also reiterated that Iran wanted war reparations – a likely non-starter for US negotiators.
The geopolitical developments sowed fresh doubts about the prospects for a long-term deal to end a war that has engulfed the Middle East.
The US and Iran appeared to pause most strikes after fighting continued in the region on Wednesday. But on Thursday evening, the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry said fresh strikes had been carried out by Iran and its proxies.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the country’s armed forces had not launched drones or missiles at any country since the ceasefire began, according to Press TV.
Saudi Arabia, where a key oil pipeline was attacked a day earlier, has lost more than half a million barrels a day of oil output capacity because of Iranian strikes, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
Strikes on a pumping station serving the vital East-West Pipeline this week crimped daily throughput by 700,000 barrels, the agency said.
Oil prices jumped towards the end of Thursday’s session on news of the drop in production capacity.
Brent traded about 1 per cent higher at almost $US97 a barrel in early London trading on Friday. Asian stocks rose, extending their first weekly gain since the conflict began. Investors were cautiously hopeful before the weekend negotiations.
Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon risks undermining the negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the US was responsible for fulfilling its commitments to stop the war in all areas, including Lebanon.
Israel’s military on Thursday told residents in eight Beirut neighbourhoods to leave ahead of strikes, after a major operation that killed more than 300 people the previous day.
With only sporadic attacks reported in Iran and across the Middle East, international attention shifted towards Lebanon, where Israel revived its campaign against Hezbollah after the militant group started firing rockets across the Israel-Lebanon border at the start of the war.
The Lebanese group – founded in 1982 as a reaction to Israel’s occupation of the country’s south – was inspired by a revolution in Shiite-majority Iran three years earlier. It evolved into Iran’s most powerful proxy, helping it deter enemies and expand its influence across the Middle East.
It’s Iran’s most important ally in a network of affiliated groups that includes Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah and Israel previously engaged in a full-blown conflict for about two months in 2024 before a tentative ceasefire in November of that year. The Lebanese government has pledged to disarm the militant group, but it hasn’t succeeded. Hezbollah has refused.
The war in the Middle East has claimed more than 5500 lives, according to governments and non-governmental agencies. More than 3600 people have been killed in Iran, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates, while more than 1700 people have died in Lebanon, the government says.
Israel said it has killed more than 1400 Hezbollah militants, including 200 on Wednesday.
Israel has reported about three dozen deaths, and a similar number have been killed across Gulf Arab nations, government reports show. There’ve also been several dozen casualties in Iraq. Thirteen US troops have been killed, according to US Central Command.
Bloomberg, AP
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