After a 21-hour marathon session of negotiations in Islamabad on Saturday, the United States of America and Iran announced that they had failed to reach a breakthrough that could end their war. The US delegation, led by the vice-president, J.D. Vance, left in the early hours of Sunday, and the Iranian team, led by the Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, departed from Pakistan’s capital shortly after. Mr Vance said in a brief press statement later that the two delegations held substantive negotiations on a range of thorny subjects. But, he added, Iran had not accepted America’s terms. The US team, he said, had laid out its best and last offer to Iran, effectively presenting a take-it-or-leave-it deal to Tehran. Then, on Sunday evening, the US president, Donald Trump, escalated tensions further, announcing a naval blockade of any ship trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz unless Iran allows all vessels to pass through. In effect, US warships will block Iran’s own oil tankers as well as those of countries like India that Iran has been allowing passage to. This has raised the stakes: Iran thought it could use its selective closure of the strait to spark an economic crisis that would pressure the US to bend; now the US is poised to inflict even greater economic pain on the world unless Iran concedes ground.
Mr Trump also claimed that a key stumbling block that prevented a deal from being reached in Islamabad was Iran’s refusal to give up on its nuclear programme. Iranian officials, though, have insisted that it was the US that was intransigent in the Pakistan talks, and that it was up to Washington to accept Tehran’s demands or face the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz for most ships. The only silver lining amid all of this is the apparent willingness, still, on the part of both sides to give diplomacy a chance. Iran has said that it is ready to continue with dialogue.
Mr Trump said the US team had developed respect for Mr Ghalibaf. And Pakistan, which mediated the ongoing ceasefire between the US and Iran, hosted the talks on Saturday and remains the principal channel of communication between them, has committed to continuing with its efforts. The US and Iran are playing havoc with the world economy in their game of one-upmanship. This must stop. A deal must be struck. And as the initiator of the war, the onus rests with the US.