Trump says 'no idea' how Iran talks will go as US-Iran meeting opens in Pakistan

The US president said he would know shortly if he felt Iran was acting in good faith about resolving the war. When asked how negotiations would go, Trump said: "I have no idea."

In Short

• High-stakes US Iran negotiations started in Islamabad on Saturday
• President Trump expressed uncertainty over talks' success
• US military prepares mine clearing in Strait of Hormuz

High-stakes face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran began in Islamabad on Saturday, with President Donald Trump admitting that he does not know how successful they could be, news agency Associated Press said citing Newsnation.

Trump confirmed in a phone interview with NewsNation that talks involving the US, Iran and Pakistan were underway, but cautioned that their success remained unclear.

When asked how negotiations would go, Trump said: “I have no idea.”

The US president said he would know shortly if he felt Iran was acting in good faith about resolving the war.

The talks mark a rare moment of direct, high-level engagement between American and Iranian leadership. Saturday’s meeting in Pakistan, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, is the most senior face-to-face contact between the two sides since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The last comparable exchange came in September 2013, when then-President Barack Obama held a phone call with newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani over Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The diplomatic push is also a major political test for Vance, who has had limited foreign policy experience and had previously been seen as a reluctant defender of the US war effort against Iran. He is joined at the table by envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while the White House said it had deployed “a full suite of U.S. experts on relevant subject areas” to support the negotiations from both Islamabad and Washington.

At the same time, the US military has begun preparing mine-clearing operations in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints through which roughly 20% of global crude supplies normally pass. Two US Navy destroyers transited the waterway on Saturday as part of what US Central Command described as a broader effort to ensure the strait is fully cleared of sea mines allegedly laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Trump added that the US knew where mines had been placed in the Strait of Hormuz and that the military was bringing equipment to remove them.

However, the claim was sharply disputed by Iran. The spokesperson for the Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters rejected CENTCOM’s assertion that American vessels had crossed the strait, stressing that permission for any vessel to pass through the strategic waterway rests with the Iranian Armed Forces.

The parallel tracks of diplomacy in Islamabad and military operations in Hormuz underline the fragile and high-risk nature of the current ceasefire, with the outcome of the talks likely to shape both regional stability and global energy markets in the coming days.

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