- US President Donald Trump has cancelled envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s trip to Pakistan for talks on the war with Iran
- On Friday, the White House said the pair would head to the country on Saturday – but now Trump says “we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says he is “yet to see if the US is truly serious about diplomacy”
- Trump’s comments come shortly after Araghchi left talks with Pakistan in the capital Islamabad, where he said he put forward Iran’s position on a framework to end the war
- It follows a week of speculation about possible US-Iran talks – here’s how we got here
- There had been little hope for any diplomatic breakthroughs this weekend, and the cancellation of the trip is a sign of how far apart the sides are.
- Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to “vigorously attack” Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon – in recent days Israel and Hezbollah have repeatedly accused each other of violating a ceasefire.
Trump says US delegation was not going to travel to Islamabad ‘without a plan’
US President Donald Trump has just spoken to reporters before he departs for Washington.
Trump says the decision to cancel his envoys’ trip to Islamabad was due to “too much travel”, adding that the US has “all the cards”.
He says nothing has changed in recent days, and the US delegation was not going to travel that far “without a plan”.
“Too much travelling, takes too long, too expensive. I’m a very cost conscious person”, he adds.
Trump says the US is willing to talk to “whoever’s running the show” in Iran, adding that “they can call us any time they want”.
“I’ll deal with whoever we have to, but there’s no reason to wait two days, have people travelling for 16, 17 hours and we’re not doing it that way”, he adds.
