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Pakistan said it would soon host talks between the United States and Iran after top diplomats from Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia met in Islamabad on ways to end the monthlong conflict, with Washington and Tehran yet to provide immediate details on whether any U.S.-Iran talks would be direct or mediated. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said both countries had expressed confidence in Pakistan to facilitate the process and that the government would be “honored to host and facilitate meaningful talks between the two sides in the coming days,” according to his remarks after the meeting.
Dar spoke as a scheduled diplomatic track in Islamabad was set in motion without an immediate public response from either Washington or Tehran. Pakistan later said the diplomats had departed for their home countries, and that the talks were originally scheduled to continue Monday, though Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not answer questions. Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment.
U.S. President Donald Trump, asked about the possibility of Pakistan-hosted talks aboard Air Force One, did not address it directly. He said Sunday night that Washington was in discussions with Iran and that “we’re doing extremely well in that negotiation.” Trump also said Iran had responded to a U.S. 15-point ceasefire plan, adding, “They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they?” He did not elaborate on what parts of the plan had been accepted.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the Islamabad meetings aimed at opening a “direct dialogue” between the U.S. and Iran, which have largely communicated through mediators. Abdelatty said the war began with U.S. and Israeli strikes during indirect talks, and Pakistan said the foreign ministers met Sunday without U.S. or Israeli participation.
Iran’s response to the prospect of talks carried sharp escalation language. Earlier, Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, dismissed talks in Pakistan as a cover after about 2,500 U.S. Marines trained in amphibious landings arrived in the Middle East, saying Iranian forces were “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever,” according to state media. Iran also warned it would target homes of U.S. and Israeli “commanders and political officials” in the region, with a spokesperson for Iran’s military joint command, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, citing “targeting of residential homes of the Iranian people in various cities” and other “malicious actions,” state media reported.
The Israeli front appeared to move in parallel with the diplomatic efforts. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military would widen its invasion of Lebanon by expanding the “existing security strip” in the country’s south while targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, though Israel did not release details. In Lebanon, more than 1 million people have been displaced, and one displaced person, Mohammad Doghman, criticized Israel as “an expansionist state.”
While diplomatic messaging played out across capitals, the conflict continued to affect regional security and global commerce, with supply disruptions and shipping concerns cited in reporting on the war’s wider impacts. The war has threatened global supplies of oil, natural gas and fertilizer and disrupted air travel, while Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz has shaken markets and prices. Reporting also said the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels’ entry into the war could threaten shipping on the Bab el-Mandeb strait to the Red Sea.
Trump said that while flying to Washington, Iran agreed to allow 20 ships carrying oil to transit the Bab el-Mandeb beginning Monday morning and continuing for the next few days “out of a sign of respect.” Israel’s military said its air force intercepted two drones launched from Yemen very early on Monday morning, and late on Sunday Israel said its fighter jets dropped more than 120 munitions in Tehran targeting sites used for weapons research, development and production. Around the same time, Iran’s state television said power was back in parts of Tehran after outages tied to attacks on electricity facilities.
Beyond the frontline and shipping corridors, Iranian threats also extended to educational and civilian targets, according to state media coverage cited in the report. The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said Iran would consider Israeli universities and branches of U.S. universities in the region “legitimate targets” unless offered safety assurances for Iranian universities, and the Iranian foreign ministry said dozens of universities and research centers had been hit, including Iran University of Science and Technology and Isfahan University of Technology. U.S. universities with campuses in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—along with the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University—moved classes online or took precautionary steps.
The scale of casualties described in the reporting underscored the urgency for any ceasefire mechanism. More than 3,000 people were said to have been killed in the war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and triggered Iranian attacks against Israel and U.S. military assets and other sites in neighboring Gulf Arab states. In Lebanon, officials said more than 1,200 people have been killed, while Iran’s authorities said more than 1,900 people had been killed in Iran and 19 in Israel. In Iraq, 80 members of the security forces were reported killed, and in Gulf states 20 people were said to have been killed, with four in the occupied West Bank. The report also said 13 U.S. service members had been killed in the war.