No Deal in Islamabad
Twenty-one hours of negotiations in Islamabad produced nothing. Vice President Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner sat across from senior Iranian officials — including the speaker of the Iranian Parliament — and walked away without an agreement. The sticking point, as Vance framed it, was Iran’s unwillingness to make a “fundamental commitment” not to develop a nuclear weapon or the means to quickly build one. That’s a reasonable bar to set. It’s also one Iran was always unlikely to clear under these conditions.
Trump, speaking from the White House before leaving for Miami, said he doesn’t care either way — that the US wins regardless of the outcome. That’s a politically convenient posture but a strategically odd one. If the strait stays contested, tanker traffic stays disrupted, and the cost of indifference lands on someone. The administration appears to be betting that economic pressure plus military degradation is a sufficient posture. Whether that calculus holds over the next few weeks will depend on what Iran does next, and on how long the two-week bombing suspension actually lasts.