JD Vance and US delegation leave Pakistan after failing to reach deal with Iran

US vice-president JD Vance left Islamabad on Sunday after failing to reach a deal with Iran after a marathon 21 hours of negotiations, Report informs via The Guardian.

Vance cited shortcomings in the talks, saying that Iran had chosen not to accept American terms, including to not build nuclear weapons.

"The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America," Vance said.

"So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We've made very clear what our red lines are."

Vance said he spoke with US president Donald Trump at least half a dozen times during the talks, and one of the most significant points of difference between the two sides was around Iran's nuclear program.

"We need to see an affirmative commitment that [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon," he said, "That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations."

Iran's foreign ministry downplayed the apparent breakdown, saying that no one had held any expectation that talks with the US could have reached an agreement within one session.

"Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session. No one had such an expectation," ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said, according to state broadcaster IRIB.

Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency meanwhile noted that "excessive" US demands had hindered reaching an agreement.

Neither Washington nor Tehran has indicated what will happen after the 14-day ceasefire initially agreed to by the US, Iran and Israel, but Pakistani mediators called on the US and Iran to maintain the ceasefire.

The talks in Islamabad were the first direct US-Iranian meeting in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The final outcome could determine the fate of the fragile two-week ceasefire and the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, a choke point for about 20% of global energy supplies that Iran has blocked since the war began. The conflict has sent global oil prices soaring and killed thousands of people.