US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are believed to have traveled to Pakistan on Saturday morning for peace negotiations with Iran, the White House said.
“The Iranians want to talk,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, adding that US Vice President JD Vance was “on standby” to travel if the talks were successful.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei said he and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Islamabad on Saturday morning and that Araghchi would meet “senior Pakistani officials.”
He added: “No meeting is planned between Iran and the United States. Iran’s views will be conveyed to Pakistan.”
Also read:
Before Baqaei’s remarks surfaced, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said Tehran had an opportunity to make a “good deal”, emphasizing that “all they have to do is give up nuclear weapons and do it in a meaningful, verifiable way.”
At Friday’s press conference, Hegseth also warned that Washington’s ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping route, was “becoming increasingly significant and global.”
The United States and Israel began attacking Iran on February 28. In response, Tehran then restricted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
This conflict caused a sharp rise in oil prices around the world.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Leavitt said Trump decided to send Witkoff and Kushner to Islamabad “to listen to the Iranian side,” adding that the U.S. president was “always willing to give diplomacy a chance.”
Leavitt added that “we have certainly seen progress on the Iranian side in recent days.”
Meanwhile, the Iranian embassy in Islamabad said Araghchi planned to “review bilateral affairs” and discuss regional developments.
Trump and Hegseth insisted this week that the United States does not feel obligated to end the war with Iran. But the news that the ASiran talks are continuing this weekend once again shows the gap between the administration’s public statements and the White House’s behind-the-scenes efforts to find a way to end the war.
The incident shows that both sides are seeking a way forward, despite Trump’s mixed messages and Tehran’s aggressive stance.
The question now is to what extent the two countries can make progress in Pakistan.
Also read:
US military ambushes Iranian oil ship in Indian Ocean Trump orders Navy to fire on Iranian ship
Trump extends ceasefire but does not lift blockade of Strait of Hormuz
Tehran will never give up control of the Strait of Hormuz, a senior Iranian politician has told the BBC.
JD Vance led the US delegation in the first round of negotiations earlier this month, but it has not yet been confirmed whether he will participate in negotiations this weekend.
Vance’s absence, if he doesn’t leave, could mean neither country expects a major breakthrough. But the fact that negotiations are continuing suggests that the United States and Iran are still seeking a deal.
On Wednesday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that it was “impossible” to open the Strait of Hormuz due to “blatant ceasefire violations” by the United States and Israel.
He said the “violations” included a US naval blockade of Iranian ports, which he said amounted to holding the world economy hostage, as well as “provocations to war” by Israel “on all fronts.”
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran remains open to negotiations with the United States, but added that “violations of commitments, blockades and threats constitute the main obstacles to real negotiations.”
Earlier this week, Trump announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire with Iran, which was originally set to expire on Wednesday, to allow negotiations to continue.
For more details click here!!
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.