Vice President JD Vance is expected to lead a new round of peace talks with Iran in Pakistan this week in a fresh effort to end the war with Tehran, but there still appear to be significant gaps between both sides as the U.S. pushes Iran to lock up its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Vance is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday evening for talks with Iran on Tuesday—although Iran was still threatening on Sunday that it wouldn’t attend talks, saying Washington’s demands remain excessive. Pakistan helped broker a two-week cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran that expires on Tuesday night.
Vance is to be joined by Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, a White House official said.
Trump warned on social media Sunday that Iran would face airstrikes that would destroy power plants and bridges if it didn’t accept a deal, and accused Tehran of breaching an initial cease-fire by firing on shipping trying to pass through the critical Strait of Hormuz.
Trump also said on Sunday that the U.S. had seized an Iranian-flagged ship in the Gulf of Oman that attempted to get past the U.S. blockade. “The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom,” he wrote in a social-media post. “Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel.” The U.S. has previously turned back more than 20 Iranian ships that left Iranian ports and sought to steam past the blockade, but this is the first known episode in which force has been used.
Iran’s state news agency on Sunday slammed the U.S. side for “excessive demands and unreasonable, unrealistic requests, repeated changes in positions, continued contradictory statements.” It cited officials saying that “no clear prospect for productive talks is envisaged.” Iran has made similar threats ahead participating in the previous round of negotiations.
The immediate aim is to agree on some kind of memorandum of understanding, Iranian and U.S. officials have said, which would set the framework for a final more detailed set of agreements which would be negotiated in coming weeks or months.
The U.S. is pushing in the immediate term for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping, freeze enrichment of uranium for at least 20 years and agree to remove its stockpiles of enriched uranium. The U.S. also aims to get Iran to curb its missile production and cease funding terror proxy networks in the long-term, though those issues aren’t a part of the immediate negotiations.
Iran has countered with demands of its own, including continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, full sanctions lifting and a shorter enrichment suspension. Those gaps leave it unclear whether a new round of negotiations, if they take place, will be enough to seal the framework of a deal.
A senior adviser to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran said the paramilitary force isn’t opposed in principle to a resumption of talks but it wants Iran to go into those talks with greater leverage. That is why the Revolutionary Guard decided to aggressively restrict shipping again in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend as a retaliation to Trump’s decision to continue blockading Iranian traffic, the adviser said.
An Arab official in the region said the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, is seeking to secure a grand pact with the U.S. that would ultimately normalize relationships between the two countries. The Revolutionary Guard’s leadership, though, wants to keep from the discussions both Iran’s military capabilities and its support for affiliated militias across the Middle East.
The central issue that has hung over Iranian talks with the U.S. since Trump returned to office last year remains unresolved, officials say: Iran’s future enrichment of uranium. The U.S. had pushed for a permanent end to Iran’s enrichment program but last week was open to accepting a 20-year Iranian suspension of the program. For Trump, going any lower would make a deal appear similar to the 2015 nuclear deal that he has long lambasted. That accord prevented Iran from producing enriched uranium above 3.67% for 15 years.
Without enrichment, Iran would lose its possible pathway to a nuclear weapon. Tehran says it isn’t seeking the bomb.
Nonetheless, officials close to the talks say that some flexibility has appeared over the issue in recent days, with Tehran exploring if Washington would be open to it carrying out some enrichment-related work after 10 years. One proposal under consideration among the mediators would see Iran suspend enrichment for a decade and then permit Tehran to produce a modest amount of low-enriched uranium for at least another 10 years.
Trump and the Iranian side have both in recent days triggered a swirl of confusion over the status of peace talks with at times conflicting and contradictory statements. Trump on Friday declared the Strait of Hormuz was fully open and Iran had agreed to nearly every U.S. demand, only for Iran to refute those statements and fire on ships in the strait a day later.
In recent days, there have been public fissures between Iran’s civilian leadership and military hard-liners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over how much to bend to U.S. demands. On Saturday, the Revolutionary Guard contradicted Iran’s foreign minister a day after his account on X announced that the strait was now open. Some people briefed on the negotiations have played down these rifts and say Iran remains open to a deal.
The U.S. has imposed a blockade of maritime traffic coming out of Iranian ports since Monday in response to Iran’s closure of the strait to increase pressure on Tehran ahead of negotiations. The U.S. military is also using sea drones to help clear the Strait of Hormuz of Iranian mines to remove threats to commercial shipping traffic.
Write to Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com, Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com and Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com