.Iran’s foreign minister heads to Pakistan for talks
Oluchi Chibuzor with agency report
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at American allies yesterday for not committing naval forces to forcibly re-open the Strait of Hormuz after Iran shut down the key waterway in retaliation to U.S.-Israeli attacks.
This was as the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, was expected to fly into Pakistan’s capital yesterday with a small delegation, in what officials said was a key step towards the resumption of direct talks with the United States aimed at ending their war.
During a Pentagon briefing with Joint Chiefs of Staff chair General Dan Caine, Hegseth implied that European and Asian countries were not sufficiently grateful for the U.S.-led war, which he called “a gift to the world” from President Donald Trump, citing the administration’s purported goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“It’s a bold and dangerous mission … courtesy of a bold and historic president,” Hegseth said.
The defense secretary claimed the U.S. Navy’s “ironclad blockade” on Iranian ports would be “going global” and “tightening by the hour” to prevent any Iranian ships from entering or leaving Iran’s territorial waters without U.S. permission.
At the same time, he accused Iranian forces of “acting like terrorists” by attempting to enforce their own blockade of the waterway against “random ships” and laying “indiscriminate mines” in the strait.
“Iran’s battered military … has been reduced to a gang of pirates with a flag. They cloak their aggression in slogans, but the world now sees them for what they are — criminals on the high seas,” he said.
“We are in control. Nothing in, nothing out,” Hegseth added.
Iranian forces have effectively blockaded the strait since the start of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, cutting off approximately 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply from markets and sending petroleum prices to levels not seen in years.
Tehran has also placed mines in the strait and has seized or attacked ships transiting through it, leading to a massive buildup of idle ships and raising fears of shortages of fuel and other products in regions that rely heavily on imports and exports through the waterway.
American ships have not been operating in that narrow passage because doing so would put them in range of Iranian drone or missile attacks.
U.S. forces in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean also have been intercepting ships bound for or originating from Iranian ports since earlier this month as a way of restricting Iranian revenue from both oil exports and Tehran’s efforts to extract massive tolls from ships seeking to pass through the strait.
Yesterday morning, Hegseth denigrated longtime U.S. allies in Europe and Asia for not joining in the American-Israeli war, claiming that they have more reason to want shipping traffic through the strait to resume because the U.S. “barely” makes use of it in comparison.
“Europe and Asia have benefited from our protection for decades, but the time for free riding is over. America and the free world deserve allies who are capable, who are loyal and who understand that being an ally is not a one-way street. It’s a two-way street,” Hegseth said.
“We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do, and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat.”
The defense secretary’s derisive comments towards U.S. allies come one week after the U.K. and France convened a 51-country summit on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced that both countries would lead “an independent and strictly defensive multinational mission to protect merchant vessels, reassure commercial shipping operators, and conduct mine clearance operations.”
Starmer and Macron said in a statement that the multinational effort would commence “as soon as conditions permit” but only after implementation of a “sustainable ceasefire agreement.”
While a long-term deal appears far off, earlier this week Trump announced that he would honour a temporary ceasefire deal that had been set to expire Wednesday. The president said he’s in no hurry to make a deal with Tehran, insisting that he has “all the time in the world” to do so.
During Friday morning’s question-and-answer session with a handpicked selection of right-wing reporters who’d been given front-row seats at the Pentagon press conference, Hegseth said the blockade would last “as long as it takes.”
He also belittled Starmer and Macron’s efforts as “a lot of talks” and mocked the multinational summit as “a silly conference in Europe last week where they got together and talked about, talking about maybe doing something eventually, when things are done.”
He similarly slammed the proposed multinational force as “not serious efforts” because they would not involve offensive operations against Iranian forces. He also said the U.S. would “welcome a serious European effort to do something about this straight and this passage, considering it’s their energy capabilities that are most at stake.”
Hegseth’s repeated criticism of America’s traditional allies is in line with the president’s persistent disdain for NATO after the alliance did not join in the offensive war he started on February 28 alongside Israel without consulting or requesting help from other members.
Trump has since then repeatedly mocked NATO as a “paper tiger” and claimed members “weren’t there for us” despite the fact that the alliance’s mutual defense provision has only been invoked to defend the U.S. in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
As Iran’s retaliatory blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has caused global oil prices to spike and Trump’s approval rating to sink ahead of the November midterm elections, the president and his aides have been considering how to punish NATO members for not joining the U.S.-led war.
Trump has mused aloud about withdrawing the U.S. from NATO — a course of action that would be prohibited under a 2021 law authored by Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his time as a Florida senator — and a leaked Pentagon memorandum first reported by Reuters suggests retaliating against the U.K. by purportedly “reviewing” British claims to the Falkland Islands.
The State Department’s website states that the islands are administered by the UK but are still claimed by Argentina, whose libertarian president, Javier Milei, is a Trump ally.
In response, a spokesperson for Starmer pointed out that Falklanders “have hugely voted overwhelmingly in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory.”
“The question of the Falkland Islands and the UK’s sovereignty and the islanders’ right to self-determination is not in question, and we’ve expressed that position clearly and consistently,” the spokesperson added.
Meanwhile, senior government officials in Islamabad confirmed that Iranian Foreign Minister, Araghchi, was expected to fly into Pakistan’s capital yesterday with a small delegation, a development confirmed by Al Jazeera, soon after a series of phone calls between Araghchi and Pakistani leaders yesterday.
For the moment, the Iranian state news agency IRNA said Araghchi’s visit to Pakistan was bilateral in nature — to speak with Pakistani officials, rather than for talks right away with the U.S. Araghchi, IRNA said, would travel to Moscow and Muscat after Islamabad.
Still, one Pakistani official said there was now a “high likelihood of a breakthrough” between the U.S. and Iran, after days of escalating brinkmanship and rising tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.
A U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance was expected to arrive in Islamabad at the start of the week for talks, but Iran then said it was not prepared to return for talks, citing the naval blockade of its ports. Donald Trump enforced the blockade on April 13, two days after the first round of negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad ended inconclusively.
Since then, the prospects of further talks have been in limbo – with Iran insisting that the U.S. needed to lift the blockade before it would return. Trump has so far refused to lift the blockade – even after Araghchi said that Iran would reopen the strait, which it had effectively blocked for most ships since early March.
Against the backdrop of that standoff, tensions have soared in recent days in the strait, where the U.S. first captured an Iranian-flagged ship, only for Iran to also capture two ships and fire at a third.
By the middle of the week, it was uncertain whether the second round of U.S.-Iran talks would happen.
Araghchi spoke by phone with Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, yesterday morning, according to Al Jazeera.
Dar underscored the importance of sustained dialogue, while Araghchi appreciated Pakistan’s “consistent and constructive facilitation role”, according to Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported a separate call between Araghchi and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, though Pakistani authorities neither confirmed nor denied it.
So far, the U.S. has not confirmed whether and when the Trump administration will send a delegation to meet Araghchi and his team, or who it will be. Vance was joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in the April 11 talks in Islamabad.
But Iran’s delegation in those talks was led by parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, widely seen as closer to the influential Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) than Araghchi and Iran’s political leadership under President Masoud Pezeshkian.
It is unclear whether Iran’s apparent willingness to re-engage in talks is the result of economic pressure from the U.S. naval blockade – which has stopped Iranian tankers from exporting to Asian economies – or the outcome of back-channel talks that have yielded a meaningful breakthrough.
Iran’s nuclear programme, U.S. sanctions and the future of the Strait of Hormuz are key sticking points that in recent days have threatened to rupture Pakistan’s mediation efforts.
For the residents of Pakistan’s capital, the equation is simpler – if frustrating: They want the talks to be over and done with as soon as possible, because of the disruption to their lives and the limbo over whether negotiations would be held or not.
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