Vance warns Tehran not to ‘play’ the US as he departs for talks to end Iran war

Vice president JD Vance has warned Tehran not to “play” the US as he departed for Islamabad for negotiations aimed at ending the war with Iran.

President Donald Trump has tasked the member of his inner circle who has seemed to be the most reluctant defender of the conflict with Iran to now find a resolution to the war that began six weeks ago, and stave off the US president’s astonishing threat to wipe out its “whole civilisation”.

Mr Vance, who has long been sceptical of foreign military interventions and outspoken about the prospect of sending troops into open-ended conflicts, set off on Friday to lead mediated talks with Iran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Boarding Air Force Two on his way to Pakistan, the vice president said: “We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s gonna be positive. We’ll of course see.”

He cited Mr Trump in saying: “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand.”

But he added: “If they’re gonna try and play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

Mr Vance also said that Mr Trump “gave us some pretty clear guidelines” on how talks should go, but he did not elaborate. The vice president did not take questions from reporters travelling with him.

Mr Vance’s trip comes as a tenuous, temporary ceasefire appears to be on the precipice of collapsing.

The chasm between Iran’s public demands and those from the US and its partner Israel seem irreconcilable. And in the US, where Mr Vance might ask voters in two years’ time to make him the next president, there is growing political and economic pressure to wrap it up.

Mr Vance is joined by Mr Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who took part in three rounds of indirect talks with Iranian negotiators aimed at settling US concerns about Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons programmes and its support for armed proxy groups in the Middle East before Mr Trump and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28.

The White House has provided scant detail about the format of the talks – whether they will be direct or indirect – and has not provided specific expectations for the meeting.

But the arrival of Mr Vance for negotiations marks a rare moment of high-level US government engagement with the Iranian government.

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, the most direct contact had been when president Barack Obama in September 2013 called newly elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.

Almost immediately after the White House and Iran announced a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday evening, the sides found themselves at odds over terms of the truce.

Iran insisted that an end to the Israeli war in Lebanon was part of the ceasefire. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Trump said the truce did not cover Lebanon and the Israeli operations there continued.

The US, meanwhile, demanded that Iran make good on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic had closed the critical shipping waterway in response to Israel’s intensifying attacks against the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

Mr Trump on Thursday night said Iran was “doing a very poor job” of allowing oil tankers to pass through, writing on social media: “That is not the agreement we have!”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Mr Vance, Mr Witkoff, Mr Kushner and secretary of state Marco Rubio “have always been collaborating on these discussions” and said Mr Trump was optimistic that a lasting deal can be reached during the two-week ceasefire.

“President Trump has a proven track record of achieving good deals on behalf of the United States and the American people, and he will only accept one that puts America first,” Ms Kelly said.

It is the highest-stakes moment so far for Mr Vance, who spent much of last year as more of a background player in the Trump White House, especially as others such as Elon Musk and Mr Rubio took turns as ever-present advisers for the president.

But Mr Vance’s portfolio is fattening fast, first with a mission to root out fraud in government programmes at home and now to help solve a US war in the Middle East, where complicated does not even begin to describe things.

Mr Vance, who served in the Iraq War while in the marines, spent two years as a US senator and a little more than one as vice president, has little diplomatic experience.

On Wednesday, he dismissed speculation that the Iranians requested that he join the talks, telling reporters: “I don’t know that. I would be surprised if that was true. But, you know, I wanted to be involved because I thought I could make a difference.”

Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official who is now executive director of think tank the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said Mr Vance, with little experience on Iran policy, is an interesting choice to lead the delegation.

Mr Trump has noted his vice president was “less enthusiastic” than other top senior officials in the Republican administration, making Mr Vance an intriguing interlocutor for the Iranian side, Mr Schanzer said.

“I think they probably prefer him knowing that his perspective on foreign intervention is one of scepticism,” Mr Schanzer said of the Iranians. “I do think that he’s going to need some help. I don’t think he’s ever been engaged in negotiations with this kind of weight, this kind of seriousness. This is as serious as it gets.”

The White House has pushed back against the characterisation that Iran wanted Mr Vance in the talks, casting it as an effort to hurt negotiations.