Vice President JD Vance and a team of negotiators are headed to Pakistan for peace talks with Iran.
The team will include U.S. special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.
The first round of talks is taking place on Saturday morning, local time.
This will come just days after Iran and the United States agreed to a deal that secured a two-week cease-fire.
However, recent public comments about the cease-fire indicate that Iran may make the talks contingent on a cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon.
At least 112 people have been killed, and 837 others were injured when Israel launched strikes on April 8 in Beirut, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
The strikes have hit the central part of the country’s capital city: “We are fighting Hezbollah, not the people of Lebanon,” a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in an X post on Wednesday.
Lebanon said that it believes it was included in the cease-fire deal between the United States, Israel, and Iran on April 8.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Arabic language international outlet Asharq Al-Awsat that the deal covers the fighting in his country, and that Israel is violating the agreement.
Berri said he contacted Pakistan to inform the mediators of Israel’s failure to comply, asking the third-party nation to speak to Washington about applying pressure on Israel to end strikes on Lebanon.
Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on April 8 that the United States and Israel had violated Iran’s 10-point proposal, which he said Trump had called a “workable basis on which to negotiate” the night before.
Ghalibaf noted how Israel struck Lebanon on April 8. He also said a drone breached Iran’s airspace near the city of Lar in Fars Province.
“Now, the very ‘workable basis on which to negotiate’ has been openly and clearly violated, even before the negotiations began,” Ghalibaf said.
“In such [a] situation, a bilateral cease-fire or negotiations is unreasonable.”
Vance, however, weighed in after the dispute broke out, saying that a dispute with Iran over Israel’s continued strikes on Lebanon stemmed from a “legitimate misunderstanding” on the part of the Iranians.
Vance reiterated the administration’s position that the cease-fire did not include an end to hostilities in Lebanon.
“I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding,” Vance said from Budapest, Hungary.
“I think the Iranians thought that the cease-fire included Lebanon, and it just didn’t. We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on social media the same day that cease-fire violations had been reported to his nation.
“I earnestly and sincerely urge all parties to exercise restraint and respect the ceasefire for two weeks, as agreed upon, so that diplomacy can take a lead role towards peaceful settlement of the conflict,” Sharif said.
However, the prime minister didn’t specify where the alleged violations occurred.
Kuwait’s military reported an “extensive wave” of drone attacks hitting its oil and power facilities earlier on Wednesday.
The United Arab Emirates also reported missile and drone attacks.
