Tehran is not currently planning to take part in new talks with the US, Iran state media reported on Sunday evening, as its military accused America of violating a fragile ceasefire between the two countries, hours after Donald Trump said he was dispatching negotiators to Islamabad.
President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that an Iranian cargo ship that tried to get past the US-enforced blockade near the strait of Hormuz had been seized. “We have full custody of their ship, and are seeing what’s on board!” Trump wrote on social media.
Iran’s military said the ship had been traveling from China. “We warn that the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will soon respond and retaliate against this armed piracy by the US military,” state media quotes an Iranian military spokesperson as saying.
The incident late on Sunday raised the possibility that the ceasefire could fail before negotiators were able to reconvene in Pakistan.
The US had said it was sending a delegation to Pakistan on Monday for another possible round of talks aimed at ending the US-Israeli war in Iran. But comments from Iranian state media that there were “currently no plans to participate in the next round,” appeared to imperil this latest round of negotiations before they had even begun.
The return of a US delegation to Islamabad, led by the vice-president, JD Vance, with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, comes after Iran on Saturday reimposed tight restrictions on the transit of commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz, reversing an agreement made hours before to reopen the strategic waterway, over the US’s refusal to lift its naval blockade.
“Iran stated that its absence from the second round of talks stemmed from what it called Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the continuing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency wrote.
The war, entering its eighth week, has killed thousands in Iran and Lebanon and sent oil prices surging because of the strait’s closure.
In an interview aired on state television late on Saturday, Iran’s chief negotiator, the parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, had said “there will be no retreat in the field of diplomacy”, while acknowledging a wide gap remained between the sides.
Trump said on Sunday that any talks in Islamabad, which would come before the two-week ceasefire expires on Wednesday, were the “last chance” for Iran to agree to a peace deal.
“If Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is getting blown up,” he told Fox News. Trump then reiterated a threat made earlier that the US would specifically destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges if it did not sign the agreement.
He said the deal the US is offering, which entails reopening the strait and ensuring Iran does not have enriched uranium, was a “very fair and reasonable deal” and unless Iran accepts, he vowed to knock out “every single Power Plant” and “every single Bridge”.
Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry said the country’s deputy prime minister, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, had spoken on Sunday with Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, during a phone call that included discussion on “the need for continued dialogue and engagement as essential to resolving the current issues as soon as possible for promoting the peace and stability in the region and beyond”.
A phone call was also planned between Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif.
Washington’s envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, told ABC News that he believed a new round of talks would lead to an “incredibly consequential” outcome.
For Tehran, the strait of Hormuz’s closure – imposed after the US and Israel launched the Iran war on 28 February during talks over Tehran’s nuclear program – is perhaps its most powerful weapon, inflicting political pain on Trump.
The US president’s renewed threat to hit Iran’s power plants and bridges fits a pattern of such warnings throughout the war, several of which preceded moves to de-escalate.
He abruptly announced the ceasefire two weeks ago, just hours after declaring that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight”.
Trump accused Iran of violating the two-week ceasefire by firing at two merchant ships in the strait after a brief uptick in transit attempts on Saturday.
Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, said the US blockade of Iran’s ports and coastline had violated the ceasefire and was “unlawful and criminal”.
By “deliberately inflicting collective punishment on the Iranian population, it amounts to war crime and crimes against humanity”, Baghaei wrote on social media.
Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes through the strait, and the global energy crisis threatens to deepen as the war drags on. Iran on Sunday held firm on its insistence that ships would not pass while the US blockade remained in effect.
Two liquefied petroleum gas tankers were seen on ship-tracking websites moving eastbound towards the strait early on Sunday morning, but the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that Iran’s armed forces turned them back.
Friday’s announcement that the strait would reopen caused the sharpest one-day drop in oil prices in years, while stock markets hit all-time highs on the expectation the disruption would soon end. But with the strait yet to reopen, markets could face new volatility when they reopen on Monday.
Pressure for a way out of the war is mounting on Trump as his fellow Republicans prepare to defend narrow majorities in Congress in the November midterm elections.
Apart from the two-week ceasefire in Iran, Israel and Lebanon announced a separate ceasefire last week.
More than 1 million Lebanese have been displaced by the Israeli invasion, which Israel said was in pursuit of Hezbollah, the powerful Shia armed group allied with Iran that fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
