By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign minister placed an urgent telephone call to his Iranian counterpart on Monday, urging Tehran to preserve a fragile regional ceasefire even as Iran announced it was halting indirect negotiations with the United States — a move that raised the specter of a broader collapse in the diplomatic architecture that has kept a wider Middle Eastern war at bay since April.
The exchange between Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi came hours after Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency — which maintains close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — reported that Tehran’s negotiating team had suspended all exchanges with mediators involved in the indirect talks with Washington. The reason, Tasnim said, was Israel’s continued military operations in Lebanon, which Iran characterized as a wholesale violation of the ceasefire understandings that have nominally been in effect since April 8.
“The Iranian negotiating team thus suspends dialogue and the exchange of texts through mediators,” the agency said, citing Israeli military actions in Lebanon and Gaza and what it described as violations “on all fronts” of the existing ceasefire.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Office, Araghchi reached out to Dar to discuss the deteriorating situation and to ask Islamabad to keep using its diplomatic channels to push for de-escalation. Iran also expressed appreciation for Pakistan’s role as a go-between in the months since the conflict erupted — a conflict that began in February following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent military retaliation.
“FM Araghchi also appreciated Pakistan’s constructive role in regional diplomacy and requested Pakistan to continue using its good offices to help facilitate de-escalation in the current situation and support efforts to maintain the ceasefire,” the Foreign Office said in a statement on Monday evening.
Dar, for his part, conveyed Islamabad’s alarm over what it described as ceasefire violations in Lebanon, and stressed that the region could ill afford a breakdown of the understandings that have kept the conflict from spiraling further. “DPM/FM conveyed Pakistan’s serious concern and emphasized the importance of ensuring that the ceasefire is sustained in order to prevent any breakdown of existing understandings,” the statement said.
Iranian state media also reported separately that Araghchi had spoken by telephone with Pakistan’s Chief of Defense Forces, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, on regional developments — an indication of the breadth of diplomatic consultations underway as tensions escalated on Monday.
The proximate cause of the latest rupture was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s order to bomb the Dahiyeh district, a southern suburb of Beirut and a Hezbollah stronghold. Iran’s army warned publicly that if Israel followed through on attacks against Dahiyeh or Beirut proper, residents of northern Israel and military targets elsewhere inside Israel would face retaliation. Kuwait, meanwhile, advised its citizens to remain indoors after its air defenses intercepted three ballistic missiles targeting the Ali Al-Salem airbase — a strike that a person familiar with the matter attributed to Iranian-aligned forces, speaking on condition of anonymity because the details had not been made public.
The strikes on Kuwait followed a weekend in which the United States hit Iranian radar and command-and-control sites in what Washington described as a “measured” response to “aggressive Iranian actions,” including the shoot-down of an American drone over international waters. The IRGC said it responded by targeting a US-linked air base, without identifying its location. The exchanges were the latest in a series of skirmishes that have repeatedly tested but not yet fully broken the ceasefire.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker and lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said the US blockade of Iranian ports and Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon together constituted “clear evidence of US noncompliance with the ceasefire.” He offered a characteristically oblique warning: “Every choice has a price, and the bill comes due.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei accused Washington of sending contradictory signals and said Tehran was continuing to engage with distrust. He also confirmed, for the first time, that Iran was seeking reparations from the United States — a demand certain to complicate any path to a deal. Progress had been made, he said, on unlocking frozen Iranian assets, but he insisted that Iran would not engage in any discussions about its nuclear program until after the Strait of Hormuz had been reopened.
The stakes for global energy markets were underscored by a sharp rise in oil prices. Brent crude climbed 3.4 percent on Monday to $94.17 a barrel, recovering sharply after falling more than 11 percent last week when traders had grown increasingly optimistic that a deal was within reach. Iranian state media warned that Tehran and its regional allies were weighing additional pressure on strategic maritime chokepoints, including the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the potential activation of a second shipping blockade through the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea — a move that could throttle global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.
President Donald Trump, however, struck a notably indifferent posture. Asked by CNBC about reports that Iran was suspending negotiations and preparing to move toward closing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said he was unbothered.
“I don’t care if they’re over, honestly,” he said in a midday telephone interview. “I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.” He called the protracted talks tedious. “Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”
Trump told NBC News that he thought silence might serve American interests. “I think we’ve been talking too much, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “I think going silent would be very good, and that could be for a long time.” He added that the US would not immediately escalate militarily if talks collapsed but would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there,” he said. “We’ll just go silent. We’ll keep the blockade. The blockade is a piece of steel.”
He was more sanguine about oil prices, predicting they would fall “like a rock” and arguing that Americans who understand the need to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon would tolerate higher prices at the pump in the short term. “Once you explain that this is all about Iran having a nuclear weapon, people are willing to pay a little bit more,” Trump said. Reuters reported later Monday that Trump had spoken by telephone with Netanyahu.
The president’s casual dismissiveness stood in sharp contrast to his own social media post from Sunday, in which he urged the public to trust the process. “It is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate,” he wrote on Truth Social, “when political hacks keep negatively ‘chirping’ that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end.”
The apparent near-collapse of negotiations follows a pivotal moment Friday, when Trump convened a White House Situation Room meeting and said he would make a “final determination” on a draft deal — only to hold back and demand revisions. The outline agreement under discussion would extend the ceasefire by roughly two months while Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the United States lifting its blockade on Iranian ports and releasing access to frozen Iranian funds. Iranian state TV reported the existence of a draft memorandum of understanding that would give Tehran “exclusive authority to determine the nature of transiting vessels” in the Strait — a provision that American officials are unlikely to accept — and commit Washington to releasing $12 billion in frozen funds within 60 days, sent directly to Iranian banks without restriction. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the report.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in a state television interview that any arrangements governing the Strait would be permanent, not temporary. “It will certainly be hard, complicated and difficult and there will be criticism and pressure against us, but we will pursue carrying it out, and naturally we will not back down from this,” he said.
The two sides remain far apart on a range of other core issues: Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, the scope of sanctions relief, the release of tens of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian oil revenues held in foreign banks, and — most critically — what long-term role, if any, Tehran will have over maritime traffic through the Hormuz Strait. Iran and Oman have both claimed the right to exercise sovereignty over the waterway, a position the United States has not accepted. Baghaei confirmed that talks in Oman had touched on Iran’s demand for a new governance structure for the Strait.
The Lebanon front has added a layer of complexity that negotiators on both sides have struggled to navigate. Israel has deepened its ground invasion of Lebanon in recent weeks, with forces capturing the Crusader-era Beaufort Castle over the weekend. Hezbollah has responded with intensified fire — the Israeli military said it fired more than 300 projectiles at Israeli soldiers and northern Israeli communities over the weekend alone. Iran has argued consistently that Lebanon is part of the broader regional ceasefire architecture and that any violations there constitute violations of the overall agreement. Israel and the United States have disputed that interpretation.
Axios reported Monday that Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri had informed Washington that Hezbollah was prepared for a “full and immediate ceasefire” with Israel, though American and Israeli officials were said to be skeptical about whether any such proposal could be made operational. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with both Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Netanyahu to push for a fresh initiative, proposing as a first step that Hezbollah halt all attacks while Israel refrained from further escalation in Beirut.
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