The guns have gone quiet. Now comes the harder part.
President Trump told The New York Post that peace talks with Iran are expected to take place in Pakistan “very soon” — a consequence of Tuesday’s cease-fire agreement that ended 39 days of fighting.
Pakistan has proposed hosting a summit in Islamabad as early as Friday, following intensive negotiations led by Trump’s team, including Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But there is already a complication.
Trump indicated that Vance may not make the trip.
“There’s a question of safety, security,” the president said in a phone interview, leaving the vice president’s attendance conspicuously open. Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to be present. Whether the second-highest official in the United States government will be in the room remains, for now, unresolved.
The cease-fire itself was built on Iran’s 10-point counter-proposal, which Trump accepted Tuesday as a tentative framework toward a permanent agreement.
The president’s team was careful to note that some of the demands are unlikely to survive final negotiations — a reminder that a framework is not a treaty, and a cease-fire is not peace.
The war began on February 28th, launched jointly with Israel, with four stated objectives: ending Iran’s nuclear program, destroying its naval capacity, eliminating its ballistic missile production, and severing its support for proxy forces across the region. Tuesday’s agreement also reopened the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had closed throughout the conflict — a chokepoint for global energy markets whose shutdown reverberated far beyond the battlefield.
What remains unresolved is consequential. The fate of Iran’s deeply buried enriched uranium stockpiles. The question of whether Tehran will be permitted to charge shipping tolls through the strait it had seized. The gap between a 10-point proposal and a durable settlement.
The table is being set. The question is whether the right people will be sitting at it — and whether what gets signed will hold.
