New Delhi: More than 21 hours of direct face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran in Islamabad ended in the early hours of Sunday (April 12) without an agreement, with both sides publicly blaming each other for the failure.Subsequently, US President Donald Trump announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, sharply escalating the situation and throwing the fate of the two-week ceasefire, which expires April 21, into serious doubt.What were the talks and how did they come about?The talks took place at the Serena Hotel in Islamabad on Saturday, with Pakistan as the host. They were the highest-level direct engagement between Washington and Tehran since the two countries severed diplomatic relations in 1979 following the Islamic Revolution, when Iran’s new government stormed the US Embassy and took American diplomats hostage.On February 28, joint US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered a wave of Iranian retaliatory attacks against Israel and US military installations across the Gulf. Iran responded by shutting the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial shipping, a closure that analysts have described as the largest oil supply shock on record, cutting off an estimated 12 to 15 million barrels of crude per day.The strikes came after earlier rounds of indirect negotiations, brokered by Oman, in February. The Pentagon has said more than 13,000 targets were hit over 40 days of operations and claimed to have destroyed 80% of Iran’s Air Defence system.A ceasefire was eventually announced on April 7 by Trump, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and the Pakistan prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, hours before a deadline set by Washington to start intensive bombardment in Iran threatening civilisational erasure. It was set to run for two weeks, expiring April 21.International reactionsFrench President Macron, writing on X as the talks got under way, said he and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had agreed to remain in close contact to support de-escalation efforts and freedom of navigation in the Strait. He also spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on securing a lasting diplomatic outcome. Earlier, Macron had condemned Israeli strikes on Lebanon as indiscriminate and said they posed a direct threat to the ceasefire’s survival. “Lebanon must be fully covered by it,” he said. Macron also told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian directly to use the Islamabad talks as an opening toward a lasting de-escalation and a robust agreement providing solid regional security guarantees.China’s foreign ministry welcomed the ceasefire ahead of the talks. “China has consistently advocated for an immediate cease-fire and cessation of hostilities, as well as the resolution of disputes through political and diplomatic channels,” a ministry spokeswoman said. Trump told AFP he believed Beijing had encouraged Tehran toward the ceasefire, and the Associated Press reported, citing unnamed sources, that Chinese officials had been in direct contact with Iranian counterparts during the lead-up to the talks.The UAE, whose territory had been struck by Iranian missiles and drones during the war, called for a concrete mechanism to address Iran’s ballistic missile programme and nuclear activities. Its state energy chief Sultan Al Jaber said the strait was not open and needed to be opened without conditions. The European Commission called for swift progress toward a negotiated settlement, saying it would protect Iranian civilians and prevent a wider global energy crisis. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for unconditional restoration of maritime freedom in the Strait.Russia’s foreign ministry, in a statement carried by TASS, called on all parties to take a responsible approach, said the talks represented an opportunity to advance a Gulf settlement, and expressed concern that unnamed forces were working to obstruct the process.Who was in the room?The US delegation was led by Vice President J.D. Vance, accompanied by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, both of them have been involved in the failed Geneva round in February. Iran’s team numbered around 70 people. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf led the delegation, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and senior negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani alongside him. Araghchi has been Iran’s principal interlocutor on nuclear questions with Western governments for more than a decade, including the 2015 JCPOA talks.The Pakistani leadership – Sharif, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Munir were also present inside the room throughout, actively facilitating the exchanges, as per reports. Dar later confirmed publicly that he and Munir had helped mediate several rounds of what he described as intense and constructive negotiations between the two sides. Both delegations had met separately with Sharif before direct talks began, with Sharif’s office saying Islamabad intended to keep facilitating both sides toward durable peace.Where did both sides stand before the talks began?Both delegations arrived carrying very public reservations alongside conditional willingness to talk.Ghalibaf set the tone on landing in Islamabad. “Unfortunately, our experience of negotiating with the Americans has always been accompanied by failure and breaches of commitments,” he said, as per Tasnim news agency. “Twice within less than a year, in the middle of negotiations, despite the goodwill of the Iranian side, they attacked us and committed multiple war crimes.” He also set out conditions for progress. “We have goodwill, but we do not trust,” he said, adding that if the American side was ready for a genuine agreement and to grant the rights of the Iranian nation, it would find Iran equally ready.Before flying out, Ghalibaf had also publicly named two preconditions he said had to be addressed before substantive negotiations could proceed. “Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations,” he wrote on social media.Iran’s vice first vice president Mohammad-Reza Aref warned on X against prioritising Israel’s interests ahead of United States. “If we face representatives of ‘Israel First,’ there will be no deal; we will inevitably continue our defence even more vigorously than before, and the world will face greater costs”.On the US side, Vance said before departure that he expected a positive outcome but warned Iran against treating the talks as a tactical exercise. Trump told reporters on Friday that the primary goal was simple: preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “No nuclear weapon. That’s 99 per cent of it,” he said. He had also claimed that the Strait of Hormuz would be opened up “with or without them”.On social media before the talks got under way, Trump posted that the only reason Iranian officials were still alive was to negotiate, adding “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards.”What was the Lebanon problem, and how did it nearly derail the talks?The question of whether Lebanon was covered by the ceasefire became the sharpest fault line in the days before Islamabad and remained a live dispute throughout the negotiations.When Sharif announced the ceasefire on April 7, he said it applied to Lebanon as well. Netanyahu rejected that characterisation the same day, a position the Trump administration backed. On the day the ceasefire came into effect, Israel struck more than 100 targets in Lebanon in under ten minutes. Lebanon’s health ministry said over 300 people were killed, the single deadliest day in the country since the war began.Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responded by halting all shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, citing the Lebanon strikes as a ceasefire violation. Tasnim, which is close to the Revolutionary Guard, said the Islamabad session would not proceed unless Israel stopped its operations in Lebanon.Vance tried to contain the damage, calling the Lebanon question a “legitimate misunderstanding”. CNN reported that it was after a tense call with Trump that Netanyahu announced that Israel would open direct talks with Lebanon’s government on disarming Hezbollah, while making clear that military operations against the group itself would continue. Lebanon’s prime minister cancelled a planned trip to Washington and said he needed to remain in Beirut. Israel’s ambassador to the US said his country would engage Lebanon’s government formally, but explicitly refused to discuss any ceasefire with Hezbollah.Meanwhile, Iranian officials, including senior Advisor to Iranian supreme leader Ali Akbar Velayat implicitly criticised Lebanese PM for direct talks with Israel that would effectively separate the Lebanon issue from the Iran-US talks. “Mr. Nawaf Salam must know,” Velayati wrote, “that ignoring the irreplaceable role of the resistance and the heroic Hezbollah will expose Lebanon to irreparable security risks.”Israeli strikes on Lebanon continued through the negotiations themselves. Israeli warplanes struck two Lebanese towns overnight, a third came under artillery fire, and a house in the town of Maaroub was hit in a strike that killed and wounded members of a family of more than seven, Lebanese state-run media reported. Lebanon’s health ministry put the total death toll from Israeli operations there since March 2 at 2,020 by the time the Islamabad session was under way.What was discussed across 21 hours?Iran’s foreign ministry described the agenda as covering the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear issue, war reparations, the lifting of sanctions and a complete end to the war against Iran and in the region.On nuclear matters, the US sought a binding Iranian commitment to permanently abandon nuclear weapons and to relinquish its stockpile of near-bomb-grade highly enriched uranium, which New York Times reported at nearly 900 pounds. At his press conference, Vance defined the US demand as “an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon”.Notably, section III of the preamble to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – known better as the Iran nuclear deal, which Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018, states, “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons”.Robert A Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and founding director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, pointed out that this was the same demand the US had made before the war. “The US demanded Iran surrender all its enriched uranium, same demand as before the war,” he wrote on social media. “Why would a stronger Iran accept this now?” He described the situation as evidence of what he called an escalation trap.Similarly, former Swedish foreign Carl Bildt wrote in response to another commentator’s opinion that fixating on nuclear issue was not helpful that “those with experience of negotiating with Iran seem flabbergasted with how things were handled in Islamabad”Benjamin Radd, a senior fellow at UCLA, told CNN the nuclear impasse came down to an incompatibility in legal positions. “From Iran’s position, it has the absolute right as a sovereign nation to enrich uranium and the United States is maintaining that Iran has forfeited the trust and the right, under the NPT, to enrich uranium,” he said, adding that Iran felt it had no reason to surrender that position, “especially now that it has the strait of Hormuz as a leverage point.”On the Strait of Hormuz, Iran made clear it would not reopen the waterway before a final, permanent deal. Tasnim reported during the session that Iran remained “determined not to allow any vessel to transit without authorization” and that an American destroyer that attempted to pass through was turned back. At the same time, the USS Frank E. Petersen and USS Michael Murphy transited the strait as part of a US Central Command mine-clearing operation, the first American naval transit since the war began. CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper said the US was “establishing a new passage” and would share the safe pathway with the maritime industry. Iran began laying its mines in the strait in March, according to US intelligence sources cited by CNN, and both destroyers were operating as part of a broader mission to clear the ordnance placed there by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.On financial matters, Iran sought the release of approximately $27 billion in frozen oil revenues held across multiple countries and demanded war reparations. The Americans refused both.When asked at his press conference whether frozen assets had come up, Vance said they had. “We talked about all those issues, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that,” he said. “But we just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms.”The meetings had started on Saturday afternoon with meetings first between the two visiting delegations with Pakistani leaders, followed by all three coming together. The discussions had also moved into technical and expert-level detail on specific issues, with both sides’ teams examining particular proposals closely. As per Iranian media reports during the night, there had been a possibility the talks could extend into a second day. The talks did run through the night and into early hours of Sunday morning before ending without agreement. What did both sides say when the talks ended?Vance spoke at a press conference before boarding Air Force Two. He opened by thanking Pakistan’s prime minister and Munir specifically, saying that whatever shortcomings had emerged in the negotiations, they were not down to the Pakistani side, which he said had done an “amazing job” trying to help both delegations bridge gaps.“We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we’ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement. And I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America.” He said the US had been “quite flexible” and “quite accommodating” and that Trump had explicitly instructed the delegation to come in good faith. “We did that, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to make any headway,” he said. He described what he was leaving behind as a “final and best offer” and said he would see whether Iran accepted it.On whether he would communicate further with Trump, Vance said the two had spoken consistently throughout the 21 hours, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper. Trump was watching from a UFC event in Florida at the time, where Rubio was later shown on the arena’s big screen moments after Vance announced the talks had failed. Trump had told reporters earlier Saturday the outcome was immaterial to him. “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me,” he said, asserting the US had already defeated Iran militarily.Vance’s principal interlocutor from Iran, parliamentary speaker Ghalibaf asserted that the failure of the talks lay in Washington’s inability to build trust.He said Iran had entered the talks with “goodwill and will” but remained shaped by “the experiences of the two previous wars”, which left it unwilling to take American assurances at face value.In the series of posts on X, Ghalibaf wrote that the Iranian delegation had put forward what he described as “forward-looking proposals”, but that “the other side ultimately failed to win the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”.In his telling, the talks had clarified positions rather than closed gaps. “America understood our logic and principles,” he said, adding that the question now was whether the United States “can win our trust or not?”At the same time, Ghalibaf signalled that diplomacy would not displace pressure. He described what he called “power diplomacy” as operating alongside military resistance, saying Iran would continue to consolidate what he termed the gains of its recent campaign.Even as he hardened that line, he echoed Vance in acknowledging Pakistan’s role, thanking Islamabad for facilitating the negotiations and sending greetings to the Pakistani public. He closed on a domestic note, praising what he called the support of the Iranian people during the “intensive 21-hour negotiations” and ending with a call of “Long live dear Iran.”His fellow delegation member, Araghchi indicated that a deal may have closer than anticipated, if not for US intransigence. “But when just inches away from “Islamabad MoU”, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade,” he wrote on X on Sunday night.In intensive talks at highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with U.S in good faith to end war.But when just inches away from “Islamabad MoU”, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade.Zero lessons earnedGood will begets good will.Enmity begets enmity.— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) April 12, 2026Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei had stated that there had been “no expectation that we could reach an agreement in a single session”. He said the sides had reached agreement on some issues and identified a gap on “two, or three key issues.” While Iranian state media reported Tehran had no plans for a next round of talks, Baqaei struck a different register, saying “diplomacy never comes to an end.”A source close to the Iranian negotiating team told the state-affiliated Fars news agency that “Iran is in no hurry, and until the US agrees to a reasonable deal, there will be no change in the status of the Strait of Hormuz.” Tehran Times, citing Fars, reiterated a popular refrain from the Iranian side, “Everything the US could not achieve in war, it demanded in talks.”Pakistan’s foreign minister Dar described the session as “intense and constructive”. “Pakistan has been and will continue to play its role to facilitate engagement and dialogue between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America in the days to come,” he said, urging both parties to honour their ceasefire commitments.Oman’s foreign minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, who had mediated earlier indirect rounds before the war, said he hoped Islamabad was not the end. “When I met Vice President Vance just hours before the war began, I formed an impression that both he and the President had a genuine and strong preference to avoid the entanglements of war,” he said, urging both sides to extend the ceasefire and continue talking.What happens next, and what are the options?The ceasefire expires April 21 and no extension has been announced. Vance left no indication of whether further talks were planned. The Iranian source cited by Fars said no date or venue had been set.Trump moved to foreclose some of that ambiguity. In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, he acknowledged that the Islamabad meeting had produced partial progress but said the nuclear question had blocked a deal.“The meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not,” he wrote. He then announced a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, adding that “Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION.”He also said the Navy would “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran,” adding that any Iranian who fires at US forces or at peaceful vessels “will be BLOWN TO HELL.” He said the blockade would “begin shortly” and would involve other countries.Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responded by insisting the Strait of Hormuz remained open for civilian vessels but said military ships “will be dealt with severely.” Later, Ghalibaf posted that fuel prices could rise sharply under the blockade, saying consumers may soon look back fondly on $4–$5 per gallon gas. He underscored the point with a stylised equation suggesting that any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz would amplify price increases, alongside a map showing current fuel prices around the White House already in that range or higher.The blockade announcement raised immediate questions about its practical and economic consequences.As CNN noted, Trump was threatening to close a strait that Iran is already restricting, and blockading even Iranian oil tankers could push global oil prices sharply higher. The US had previously granted a temporary licence in March for Iran to sell oil sitting on tankers, specifically to help keep prices in check.Appearing on Fox News Sunday morning, Trump sought to signal that he still expected Iran to return to talks. “That statement got them to the bargaining table,” he said, referring to his April 7 threat to destroy Iran’s civilisation. “They haven’t left the bargaining table. I predict they come back and they give us everything we want.”Before the talks, the Hormuz closure had kept oil flow far below normal, with only around 30 ships transiting the strait since the ceasefire took effect, compared to around 150 per day before the war. Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher in the Iran and Shi’ite Axis Programme at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and a former head of the Iran branch in Israeli Defence Intelligence, warned that closing the Strait of Hormuz “will not force Iran into submission”.“What did not work after five weeks of sustained aerial pressure is unlikely to succeed through maritime pressure alone,” he wrote on X. The Israeli analyst said that it was “striking” that Trump was still expecting quick capitulation like Venezuela from Iran after five weeks of fighting.Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, put it more bluntly, saying a blockade on the Strait “won’t hurt Iran as much as it will hurt any government paying the toll,” and questioned whether Trump had weighed the implications for his relationship with Beijing.Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, flagged an additional risk, writing that a blockade would make Houthi closure of the Red Sea more likely, potentially pulling a second chokepoint into the crisis and pushing oil toward $200 per barrel.With the ceasefire still running and neither side having declared talks dead, Parsi wrote that these moves looked more like negotiating tactics than settled policy, and said he would not be surprised if they were walked back before markets opened Monday.Retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, said on CNN the blockade was “not a trivial move on the chessboard,” but cautioned that “it requires enormous naval power, and Iran has real options to fight back.”The broader assessment among those who have negotiated with Iran was that neither side was yet positioned to make the concessions a deal would require. Aaron David Miller, the former State Department Middle East negotiator, said a blockade “will hurt Iran,” but warned it would also “push oil prices higher, escalate military conflict and possibly draw Houthis into blocking a second choke point in Red Sea.” “The US is in a strategic conundrum,” he wrote. “And right now, no easy quick way out.” Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Centre who resigned from the Trump administration in March over the war, posted on social media that zero enrichment had been the “poison pill” that killed the Islamabad negotiations. Trump’s red line had always been no nuclear weapons, not zero enrichment, he wrote, adding: “We must pursue our goals not Israel’s.”Not everyone was dismissive of the move. Dennis Ross, who served as US Special Envoy for Middle East Peace under multiple administrations, argued the blockade “always made more sense than seizing Kharg Island,” saying it would stop Iran’s exports, cut its revenues and “puts great pressure on China to pressure Iran.”Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, who had earlier described the Islamabad session as a first round with an inherently “throat-clearing” quality, backed the blockade announcement but argued it needed to be paired with a political offer — specifically a new international governance authority for the Strait in which Iran would participate but not hold unilateral control.On Sunday, United States Central Command appeared to temper the president’s directive, saying US forces would target ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas” while allowing other vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The blockade is set to begin at 10 am Eastern Time on April 13.What we don’t knowThe content of what Vance described as a “final and best offer” from the United States remains undisclosed. He declined to outline its terms or specify where Washington’s red lines were drawn. There is, of course, still no clarity on the respective proposals exchanged by Iran and United States which Trump had said would be the basis of the talks when announcing the ceasefire.Whether the ceasefire holds beyond April 21 is also uncertain. Neither side has announced an extension, and a source cited by Fars said no further talks are currently scheduled. Vance made no mention about it during the press conference.Iran’s foreign ministry said the two sides reached some understandings during the 21 hours of negotiations, but neither government has clarified what those were or how wide the gap remains on the “two or three” unresolved issues.The practical implications of Trump’s blockade announcement remain unclear. Whether the US Navy has the operational capacity and political backing to simultaneously blockade the Strait, interdict vessels that have paid Iranian tolls and continue mine-clearing operations without triggering direct military confrontation with Iran has not been addressed. The IRGC’s warning that military ships “will be dealt with severely” sets up the possibility of an incident even before the ceasefire expires.