US-Iran talks open in Switzerland under shadow of Trump threats
As Vance met Iran's delegation above Lake Lucerne, Trump threatened to bomb Iran again, and Tehran refused to give ground on uranium enrichment.
A week-old peace framework between Washington and Tehran got its first real test on Sunday, as US Vice-President JD Vance sat down with an Iranian delegation at a mountaintop resort above Lake Lucerne while President Donald Trump, several time zones away, threatened to bomb Iran again.
The talks at the Bürgenstock Resort near Obbürgen, Switzerland, are meant to fill in the technical detail of a memorandum of understanding signed last week, the document now holding together a fragile halt to fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon. For a reader far from the region, the stakes are concrete: the argument runs straight through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important oil shipping routes.
On his Truth Social account, Trump set the tone from outside the room.
"Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don't, we'll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!"
Donald Trump, writing on Truth Social
Vance, who arrived early in the morning, struck a calmer note. He told reporters the negotiations were going well. "We've already made great progress over just the last few hours, and I expect that we'll make additional progress in the hours to come," he said, adding that "these things are always a little bit messy" and that the United States had "done more to stop the conflict in Lebanon than any government anywhere in the world."
Iran has not softened on the point it cares about most. President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday morning that what is certain is that we will never back down from the right to enrich uranium, and the other side is also forced to accept it
. Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful.
The flashpoint going into the weekend was Hormuz itself. Iran's military announced on Saturday that it had closed the strait, citing continued Israeli strikes on Hezbollah and accusing Washington of failing to rein in its ally, which Tehran called a breach of the agreement's requirement that all fighting in Lebanon stop. US Central Command said traffic was moving normally.
U.S. Central Command on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz
There was one piece of better news. On Sunday the interim head of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon told NPR that, for the first time since the war began on March 2, peacekeepers had logged no attacks from either side over a full day.
Mediation is being run by Pakistan and Qatar. Vance met Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, while the International Atomic Energy Agency's Rafael Grossi joined the sessions. Neither Israel nor Lebanon has signed the memorandum, though it calls for respect of Lebanese sovereignty, the very provision Iran now says Washington must enforce.
This is the second attempt in a week to get the two sides into a room; an earlier round was postponed amid the Lebanon fighting. What is different now is the clock. Negotiators have given themselves a 60-day window to turn a thin framework into something binding, according to NBC News, and Sunday showed how quickly a single social-media post can rattle it. The opening session ended with progress claimed and nothing yet signed.
