Iran and Washington plan new talks in Pakistan

Despite trading threats and issuing mixed messages in recent days, both the United States and Iran indicated Monday that they planned to take part in another round of peace talks in Pakistan this week.

Vice President JD Vance was expected to leave Washington for Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Tuesday, according to two U.S. officials. Iran did not publicly commit to talks. But two senior Iranian officials said that Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who attended the last round of negotiations, would attend again if Vance did.

The possibility of further talks came as Iran threatened to retaliate for the seizure by U.S. forces of an Iranian cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. Iran’s armed forces called it “piracy,” and warned that they would soon retaliate, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency.

The U.S. Navy has now turned back 27 ships heading for or leaving Iranian ports, according to United States Central Command, as an American blockade enters its second week. Only three ships passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday as traffic in the economically crucial waterway slowed to a near halt, according to Kpler, a company that tracks maritime traffic.

President Donald Trump said Monday on social media that “if Iran’s new leaders (Regime Change!) are smart, Iran can have a great and prosperous future!”

Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, noted the “deep historical mistrust” between Iran and the United States, but said that war would serve neither country’s interests.

Iranian officials have publicly expressed skepticism about the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough as a two-week ceasefire with the United States nears expiration on Wednesday.

Iranian officials “do not see any serious sign of U.S. commitment” to a deal, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said at a news conference Monday in Tehran. “It is not possible to speak of advancing diplomacy in its real and conventional sense,” he said.

Yet Iranian officials have been careful not to rule out talks. Just hours after Baghaei spoke at the news conference, Pezeshkian made an appeal for “reason” and calm.

“While standing firm against injustice and excessive demands, we must bear in mind that continuing the conflict benefits no one,” he said. “Not us, not the other side, and not the future of the region or the generations to come.”

Two senior Iranian officials then said Ghalibaf was planning to lead a delegation to Islamabad if Vance went. Given the long flight from Washington to Pakistan, Ghalibaf would have time to wait before deciding whether to board a plane.

The mixed messages reflected a wariness among Iranian officials, experts said, about the prospects for a lasting peace agreement with the United States.

Iran’s leadership is contending with two main sources of pressure, said Hamidreza Azizi, an expert on Iranian security issues at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a research group based in Berlin.

One comes from Iranian hard-liners emboldened by having so far survived the U.S.-Israeli onslaught that began at the end of February. They have organized demonstrations across Iran at which supporters wave rifles and chant against surrender.

“They have a core support base of the Islamic Republic, which is very hard line and ideological, and is very sensitive to any sign of a concession that they would immediately interpret as capitulation,” Azizi said.

“The other pressure, of course,” he said, “is Donald Trump — and his apparent willingness to stick to his coercive diplomatic strategy.”

Azizi pointed to what happened over the weekend after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, announced that Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Araghchi immediately came under criticism from media affiliated with Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard. Then, less than an hour later, Trump said the U.S. naval blockade against Iran would continue. The next day, Iranian forces reimposed their own blockade.

“I think the Iranians really do want a deal, but Trump is just too crude — he just wants total victory in public,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a regional news outlet. “And the Iranians feel like time is on their side.”

Some Iranian officials remain deeply concerned that they could come under attack amid the talks, or that Trump could return to full-fledged war, said Sasan Karimi, a political scientist at the University of Tehran and a former vice president for strategy in the Iranian government. “Negotiators do not even know whether they could be attacked or not when they are in the air,” he said.

But there are also broader concerns.

“They don’t want to fall into a trap, and they don’t want to have pressurized negotiations, whether that is by limiting the time or by setting preconditions,” Karimi said. “The Iranians, in those circumstances, would prefer war.”

In other developments:

Commodities and markets: The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, climbed 5.6% to $95.48 a barrel on Monday. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, rose 6% to $89.61 a barrel. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% Monday. The index has risen sharply in recent weeks and ended trading on Friday 3.6% higher than before the war began.

Gas prices fell Monday to a national average of $4.04 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. That is down from a recent high of $4.17 earlier in April. Still, drivers are paying about 36% more for gas than they were when the war began. Diesel prices also stood at $5.53 Monday, up 47% since the start of the war.

Wartime powers: Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to provide federal funds for a wide range of energy projects, as his administration faces pressure to help curb rising oil and gas costs.

Trump on Monday signed five presidential determinations under the law, according to a White House official on condition of anonymity to detail the measures ahead of a public announcement. Those measures broadly cover a number of sectors, including coal power, liquefied natural gas, domestic petroleum and power-grid infrastructure.

The move allows the Energy Department to deploy funding that was secured last year in Trump’s flagship tax-and-spending package. The directives authorize the use of tools, including energy purchases and financial support, the official said, in a bid to overcome delays, financing shortfalls, regulatory hold-ups and market barriers impacting the industries.

Projects eligible for awards could include coal-fired power plants, gas-turbine and transformer manufacturing facilities and critical electrical production sites — all of which have been subject to shortages.

The Defense Production Act allows presidents to take unilateral actions to bolster U.S. national defense capabilities, including by directing private-sector companies to expand production of critical industrial materials. Trump has already invoked the Cold War-era statute to advance some of his energy priorities, including a bid to clear the way for renewed oil production off the southern California coast.

Lebanon: The U.S. State Department will host another round of ambassador-level talks between Israel and Lebanon on Thursday, the department said. Israel wants the disarmament of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militant group, and Lebanon wants a complete Israeli withdrawal from its south.

On Monday, the Israeli military said it had attacked a rocket launch pad in the south of Lebanon overnight, saying it was ready to fire and posed a “direct threat to the communities of northern Israel” and to soldiers.

The rocket launch pad was located to the north of the security zone, according to the Israeli army.

Lebanese security sources also reported that Israel had bombed three towns near the border in southern Lebanon by Monday midday. According to these reports, there was also artillery fire by the Israeli military in another border town.

Later in the day, the Lebanese Health Ministry said six people had been injured in an Israeli attack in the province of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon. An Israeli military spokesman denied the attack, saying there was no information available regarding such an attack.

The Israeli military on Monday also reported two operations in which it had “eliminated terrorists who violated the ceasefire” and approached troops in southern Lebanon, “posing an imminent threat.”

The air force fired on the orders of ground troops, it said. It was initially unclear how many people had been killed in the incidents.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced on Monday morning that Israeli army armored vehicles had been hit during the night by explosive devices that the Iran-backed militia had previously placed in the area.

Apologies: Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Monday apologized to Christians after an Israeli Defense Forces soldier damaged a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon.

“The damaging of a Christian religious symbol by an IDF soldier in southern Lebanon is grave and disgraceful,” Sa’ar said in a post on social media platform X.

Sa’ar went on to commend the IDF for condemning the incident and launching an investigation, stressing that “this shameful action is completely contrary to our values.”

“We apologize for this incident and to every Christian whose feelings were hurt,” Sa’ar added.

The Israeli military on Sunday confirmed on social media that an “IDF soldier operating in southern Lebanon” damaged a Christian symbol, in connection with a photograph published earlier in the day showing a man in Israeli uniform striking the face of a fallen figure of Jesus Christ with a hammer.

The military said appropriate measures would be taken against those involved and added it would assist the local community in restoring the crucifix at its original site. About one-third of Lebanon’s population is Christian.

Bloomberg News and German press agency dpa contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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