When JD Vance touched down in Islamabad on Saturday morning — flanked by Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and a 17-hour flight behind them — the expectation across the world was that something historic might actually happen. For the first time since Iran's 1979 revolution, an American vice president was sitting across the table from Iranian officials in direct, face-to-face talks.
It was the most senior US-Iran diplomatic contact in nearly half a century.
It ended at dawn on Sunday, with Vance standing at a podium, a pair of American flags behind him, announcing a collapse. Twenty-one hours of negotiating. No deal.
"We go back to the United States having not come to an agreement," Vance said. "And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America."
He departed Islamabad almost immediately after the four-minute press conference. His motorcade was gone before reporters had filed their first paragraphs.
How It Got to This Point: A War That Nobody Planned to Still Be Fighting.
On February 28, after months of stalled nuclear negotiations and a US-Israeli assessment that Tehran was stalling rather than dealing, President Donald Trump launched what he called "major combat operations" against Iran. Alongside Israeli forces, American strikes hit Iranian military command structures, government facilities, and — critically — key figures in Tehran's leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard chief Mohammad Pakpour.
Iran hit back hard. Missile strikes against Israel, against US military bases across the Middle East, and also against Gulf neighbours — the UAE and Kuwait took hits. For roughly six weeks, the Middle East lurched from one escalation to the next. Global oil markets convulsed. US inflation jumped to a 3.3% annual rate in March, driven almost entirely by the energy shock from a blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
By the time a fragile ceasefire was brokered on April 7 — courtesy of Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who managed to find a channel where everyone else had failed — at least 2,076 people had been killed in US-Israeli strikes on Iran alone. Thousands more were dead across the region.
The ceasefire had one central condition from the American side: Iran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Tehran agreed. Conditionally. And with serious caveats.
The Strait: Why This 33-Kilometre Waterway Is the Whole War
The Strait of Hormuz is not just a shipping lane. It is the throat through which roughly a fifth of all the world's traded oil passes — over 100 tankers on a normal day. It connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, and every barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, and Iran itself either passes through it or doesn't reach the world.
When Iran closed the Strait at the start of the war, it wasn't a military gesture. It was an economic weapon aimed directly at every country on earth that runs on imported oil. That includes most of Asia — China, Japan, South Korea, India. It includes Europe. It includes everyone.
Iran made the closure even more dangerous by laying naval mines in the waterway. Those mines didn't disappear when the ceasefire was announced.
On Saturday, as Vance was still in Islamabad talking, the US Central Command announced that two Navy guided-missile destroyers — the USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. and USS Michael Murphy — had entered the Strait to begin "setting conditions" for mine-clearing operations. Trump, never one to undersell, described it on Truth Social as clearing the Strait as "a favor to Countries all over the World, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others."
Marine traffic trackers briefly picked up the USS Murphy's AIS signal in the Strait, and by Sunday morning, at least 16 ships transited the waterway — one of its busiest days since the ceasefire began. Three oil tankers — one Chinese-flagged, one from Hong Kong, one Liberian-registered — made it through.
But here's the reality check: since the ceasefire was announced on April 7, only 12 ships had been recorded transiting the Strait in the preceding days. Before the war, it was over 100 a day. The Strait is technically "open." In practice, it is barely a trickle.
And Iran hasn't forgotten its mines are there. Iranian officials have made clear they view those mines, and control over the Strait passage, as strategic leverage — not as something to be handed away in negotiations. During the Islamabad talks, Pakistani mediators told CNN that the Strait of Hormuz remained a key sticking point even as other discussions remained "largely positive."
Trump, meanwhile, floated an idea that raised eyebrows even among his own supporters: a "joint venture" between the US and Iran to manage Strait security. Iran would effectively become a toll-collecting partner for global oil shipping. Reports also emerged during the week suggesting Tehran was considering charging ships a transit toll to pass through the Strait — a proposal that sent commodity traders reaching for their calculators.
None of this was resolved in Islamabad.
What Happened in the Room
The Iranian delegation that arrived in Islamabad was 71 people strong — negotiators, technical experts, legal advisers, media representatives, security. The US brought what a senior White House official called "a full suite of experts on relevant subject areas," with additional teams supporting remotely from Washington.
Both sides first met separately with Pakistan's leadership — Prime Minister Sharif and his foreign minister — before direct trilateral talks began around 5 p.m. local time on Saturday. Chinese, Egyptian, Saudi, and Qatari officials were also in Islamabad in an unofficial facilitation role, according to regional officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
As hours passed, the talks moved into what Iran's government described as an "expert-level stage" — committees on economics, military affairs, legal matters, and nuclear issues meeting in parallel. This is usually a sign of progress in diplomatic processes. It means both sides are getting into the details.
But the details were exactly where the problem lived.
The US position was straightforward, in Vance's words: Iran must make an affirmative, long-term commitment to not pursue nuclear weapons. Not just now, not just for two years — permanently. And it must give up the tools that would let it race to a nuclear weapon quickly. That means surrendering its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% — a level that has no civilian purpose and sits just one technical step away from weapons-grade material at 90%.
Iran's position was equally clear: enrichment is a sovereign right. It will not dismantle its nuclear infrastructure. And it has been burned before — the 2015 nuclear deal, signed under Obama, was torn up by Trump in 2018. Iran wants binding guarantees this time, through a UN Security Council resolution. It wants all sanctions lifted. It wants compensation for war damages. It wants US military forces out of the region.
The gap between these two positions is not a gap you bridge in 21 hours.
Vance told reporters he had spoken with Trump "half a dozen times, a dozen times" during the negotiations, and also with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He described the US approach as negotiating "in good faith." He said the offer left on the table was America's "best and final."
He then walked to his motorcade and left.
Iran's 10 Points vs America's 15 Points
Both sides arrived with written frameworks. The fact that neither side has agreed to simply adopt the other's is the core of the impasse.
Iran's 10-point proposal calls for: recognition of Iran's right to uranium enrichment; the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions; removal of all UN Security Council resolutions against Iran; an end to IAEA resolutions targeting Tehran; withdrawal of all US combat forces from the region; full war reparations, to be paid through a toll on Hormuz shipping; release of frozen Iranian assets; and all of this locked into a binding UNSC resolution.
The US 15-point plan, delivered to Iran through Pakistani intermediaries, demands: a 30-day ceasefire; immediate reopening of the Strait; decommissioning of Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan; a permanent commitment to zero uranium enrichment; limits on Iran's defense capabilities; an end to support for regional proxy groups; and — reportedly — an acknowledgment of Israel's right to exist.
Trump said in late March that Iran had agreed to "most of" the 15 US points. Iran denied this. During the ceasefire announcement week, Trump described Iran's 10-point plan as "a workable basis on which to negotiate." A White House official then told the New York Times that what Trump was referring to was not the same as the 10 points Iran had published.
In other words, both sides have been talking past each other in public even as they negotiate in private. That habit did not help the mood in Islamabad.
What Vance Left Behind — And What It Means
Vance did not say the ceasefire was over. He did not announce that bombs would resume on April 21, when the two-week window expires. He said the US had left its "best offer" on the table, and that it was now up to Iran to figure out what to do with it.
The Iranian side, for its part, was not publicly celebrating. Iranian state TV noted "serious differences." Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation, has not issued a victory statement. Two Pakistani officials said discussions between delegations were expected to resume after a break — suggesting the talks are not completely dead, even if their highest-profile participant has boarded a plane home.
Iranian media, significantly, described the Islamabad talks as continuing into a second day even after Vance's departure. That matters. It means the conversation doesn't end just because the vice president left. Witkoff and Kushner remain. Their continued presence, and whether any Iranian counterpart stays willing to engage, will determine what happens next.
Trump, speaking to journalists before departing for Miami, was characteristically unbothered. "Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me," he said. "Regardless what happens, we win." He also confirmed that US warships are being reloaded with fresh ammunition — a message clearly intended for Tehran.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a 13-minute televised address Saturday in which he said the campaign against Iran was "not yet over" and that Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium would be removed "either by an agreement or by other means." The Israeli military is still striking Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, and Lebanon's health ministry has now recorded over 2,000 deaths there.
Pope Leo XIV, in an address in Rome, condemned the "delusion of omnipotence" fuelling the conflict.
What's at Stake for India and the World
India has a direct, concrete interest in how this plays out.
India is one of the world's largest importers of crude oil, and a significant portion of that oil — or the tankers carrying it — moves through or near the Strait of Hormuz. The energy shock from the conflict has already fed into global inflation. Every day the Strait operates at reduced capacity is a day India's import bill inches higher.
India also has its own strategic relationship with both Iran and the US to manage carefully. The Chabahar port project, which gives India a trade route into Central Asia bypassing Pakistan, sits in Iranian territory. Any escalation of the conflict directly threatens that investment and the strategic logic behind it.
Beyond economics, if this war metastasizes further or if nuclear talks collapse entirely — leading to either an Iranian bomb or a US-Israeli military strike on remaining nuclear facilities — the entire geopolitics of the Persian Gulf region shifts. India would face enormous pressure from multiple directions simultaneously.
For now, 16 tankers passed through Hormuz on Sunday. The mines are still there. The ceasefire still holds, technically. And JD Vance is on a plane back to Washington having said what is possibly the most diplomatically loaded phrase in any negotiation: "best and final offer."
What Iran does next — whether it ignores that offer, returns to the table, or lets the ceasefire expire without a deal — will determine whether the next chapter of this story is written in Islamabad or in the skies over Tehran.