Trump tells envoys not to travel to Pakistan for further Iran talks

US President Donald Trump said he has told envoys not to go to Pakistan for more talks with Iran, shortly after Iran’s top diplomat left Islamabad late on Saturday.

Mr Trump told Fox News that “they can call us any time they want”.

The White House on Friday said Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would be going to Pakistan’s capital to attempt to revive ceasefire negotiations.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi left Pakistan on Saturday evening, two Pakistani officials told the Associated Press.

Mr Araghchi had met with Pakistani Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif about what he called Iran’s red lines for negotiations, and said Tehran would engage with Pakistan’s mediation efforts “until a result is achieved”.

Iran had said talks would be indirect.

An open-ended ceasefire has paused most fighting, but the economic fallout grows with global shipments of oil, liquefied natural gas, fertiliser and other supplies disrupted by the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have openly asked how they can trust the US after talks last year and early this year over Tehran’s nuclear programme ended with it being attacked by the US and Israel.

Islamabad was in near-lockdown ahead of the expected talks and residents struggled to commute even short distances due to checkpoints, road closures and diversions.

Pakistan has been trying to get the US and Iran back to the table since Mr Trump this week announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire, honouring Islamabad’s request for more diplomatic outreach.

The first round of talks in Pakistan, led on the US side by Vice President JD Vance, lasted more than 20 hours and were face to face, the highest-level direct talks between the long-time adversaries since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Mr Araghchi and Mr Trump’s envoys held hours of indirect talks in Geneva on February 27 but walked away without a deal. The next day, Israel and the United States started the war.

The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, is still nearly 50% higher than when the war began because of Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in peacetime.

Iran attacked three ships this week while the US maintains a blockade on Iranian ports. Mr Trump has ordered the military to “shoot and kill” small boats that could be placing mines.

German defence minister Boris Pistorius said on Saturday his country is sending minesweeper ships to the Mediterranean to help remove Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end.

The squeeze on shipments through the strait has rippled through global maritime trade, including through the Panama Canal nearly halfway around the world.

Since the war began, authorities say at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran and more than 2,490 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the Iran war started.

Additionally, 23 people have been killed in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, 13 US service members in the region and six members of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon have been killed.

Mr Trump announced on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah by three weeks. Hezbollah has not participated in the Washington-brokered diplomacy.