By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is positioning itself as the venue for the next round of technical negotiations between the United States and Iran, according to diplomatic sources, with talks expected to resume July 11 even as the two governments continued to hurl insults at each other during the funeral proceedings for Iran’s assassinated supreme leader.
Al Arabiya reported on Saturday, citing unnamed sources, that the upcoming session will center on US sanctions against Iran, the fate of billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets, and the broader dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program. Diplomatic sources told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that Islamabad has become the front-runner over an alternative site, the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland, where an earlier round of high-level talks was held.
“There are two possible venues for the technical talks — Islamabad and the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland,” one diplomatic source told Dawn. “Islamabad, however, is the more likely option.”
A final decision on the location has not been announced.
The talks would build on a memorandum of understanding that Iran and the United States signed June 18, establishing a 60-day window for the two adversaries to negotiate a comprehensive settlement covering Iran’s nuclear activities, sanctions relief, and related security matters. That agreement followed a period of open warfare: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led Iran for more than three decades, was killed alongside several family members in a U.S.-Israeli strike on February 28 that opened a war between Iran and the two countries.
Iran has spent this week burying Khamenei in an elaborate, multi-day state funeral that authorities hoped would draw millions of mourners to Tehran, evoking the scale of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s funeral in 1989. The proceedings, which began Saturday, have drawn foreign dignitaries including Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, and a delegation from Hamas.
The diplomatic track and the funeral have run on parallel, sometimes colliding schedules. Iranian officials have said the composition of Tehran’s negotiating delegation for the July 11 session will not be finalized until the funeral ceremonies conclude.
A month of shuttle diplomacy
The path to next week’s expected talks has run through several countries and multiple rounds of lower-level contacts.
On June 22, technical negotiators from Iran and the United States met in Switzerland, a day after high-level consultations between the two delegations that were mediated by Pakistan and Qatar. On Wednesday, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said mediators from his country and Pakistan had wrapped up separate meetings with American and Iranian negotiators and reported “positive progress” on matters tied to the memorandum of understanding. The parties agreed to continue discussions and to schedule their next meeting as soon as possible, he said.
Earlier still, indirect technical talks took place in Doha. President Trump described those discussions as “very good.” Iranian officials said afterward that the two sides had reached an understanding on releasing a portion of Iran’s frozen assets, though American officials disputed that any such agreement had actually been reached.
Diplomatic sources said Qatari and Pakistani mediators kept up indirect contact between the two sides even during pauses in formal negotiations, working to preserve freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and to hold together a 60-day ceasefire reached after the June talks in Switzerland.
The most substantial round of negotiations to date took place at the Burgenstock resort, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan. Those marathon sessions, according to diplomatic sources, touched on nuclear restrictions, sanctions relief, security in the Strait of Hormuz, and the ceasefire governing hostilities in Lebanon. Negotiators emerged describing a roadmap toward a broader settlement, though they cautioned that the process remained fragile given the continuing hostility between the two governments.
Officials familiar with the talks said a further round of high-level, direct negotiations is expected in Doha during the third week of July, once technical teams have worked through the details of a potential agreement.
Trump mocks funeral, Iran vows retribution
Even as the diplomatic groundwork proceeded, the rhetoric between Washington and Tehran sharpened during the week of Khamenei’s funeral.
Speaking at Mount Rushmore during an Independence Day event marking the start of celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary, Trump mocked the scale of the mourning period. “We gave them a week off for a funeral because we are nice,” he said, according to Al Jazeera. He added: “We beat Venezuela in one day, and we knocked the hell out of Iran. They are dying to settle; they want to settle so badly.”
Iran’s foreign ministry responded that Tehran would pursue “justice” against the United States and Israel, calling it “an enduring cause.” The ministry said the turnout of high-level delegations from around the world for Khamenei’s funeral demonstrated his stature and the standing of the Iranian people.
Rear Admiral Ali Ozmaei, commander of the navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency that “divine retribution” against the United States and Israel was “not far off.” He said he and his personnel had pledged “to continue the path of the martyred leader of the Ummah with strength and steadfastness.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, issued a pointed warning against military activity by outside powers in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil shipping lanes. “The Strait of Hormuz is not a theater for the military display of extra-regional powers,” he wrote on the social media platform X, adding that Iran, as “the responsible power and guarantor of the Strait’s security,” would treat any military movement in the waterway with “the utmost seriousness.”
Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, also pushed back on Trump directly. After the president repeated, in an interview with CNBC, his claim that Iran would purchase American agricultural products as part of a future peace deal — an assertion Tehran denies — Ghalibaf wrote on X: “Imagine having 40-something million of your own citizens on food stamps and calling another nation hungry.”
Meeting separately with Uzbekistan’s parliamentary speaker, Ghalibaf said the war had changed the region’s underlying realities and forced Washington to accept “existing realities,” according to Al Jazeera. He said conditions had “improved compared to the past” and that trade relations could expand as sanctions relief takes shape. He also pointed to joint management of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz by Iran and Oman, along with what he described as a reduction in “American mischief” in the region, as grounds for improved prospects for transit cooperation.
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