Vice President, JD Vance Departs US For Pakistan For Us-Iran Talks

United States Vice President JD Vance has departed for Pakistan to engage in talks on ending the US-Israeli war with Iran, saying he expects “positive” results.

Vance spoke briefly to reporters on Friday as he boarded a plane bound for Islamabad, where talks with Iran were set to be held the following day.

“We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s going to be positive. We’ll, of course, see,” he said.

Vance added that President Donald Trump had given him “pretty clear guidelines” for the meeting.

“If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we are certainly willing to extend an open hand, that’s one thing,” he said.

“If they’re going to try to play us, they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

Some observers have seen the last-minute move to have Vance lead the US delegation as a sign of Iran’s wariness with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Witkoff and Kushner, who will still attend Saturday’s talks, had twice led indirect negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Those talks were ongoing when Israel initiated a 12-day war on Iran in June 2025, which ended with the US striking three of Iran’s key nuclear sites, and when the US and Israel launched the latest war on February 28.

While deeply loyal to Trump, Vance is also viewed as less hawkish than many of the president’s other top officials.

“It’s interesting that JD Vance has been singled out to head this delegation. He hasn’t played much of a role to date,” Al Jazeera correspondent Mike Hanna reported from Washington, DC.

“One of the reasons, possibly, is because the Iranians had expressed their preference for dealing with Vance, rather than the other envoys who they have been dealing with.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are expected to lead the Iranian delegation, although it is not clear if any representative from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would attend.

The format of negotiations, and whether the US and Iranian officials would speak face to face or through intermediaries, was not revealed as of Friday.