Iran says progress made in US talks, but no new meeting set

Progress is being claimed on both sides of the Iran-U.S. track, but the credibility gap is still wide: Tehran said no new round of negotiations has been scheduled, while Washington says it has made “a lot of progress” without putting a timeline or verification plan on the table.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said on April 18 that a framework of understanding must be agreed before any new date can be set, and that the sides are still too far apart for another face-to-face session. He pointed to Washington’s insistence on what Tehran calls “maximalist” demands, underscoring that the core dispute is not about tone but about whether either side is prepared to narrow its asks enough to lock in an interim deal.

That matters because the diplomatic center of gravity has shifted. Reuters reported that negotiators had pulled back from the idea of a comprehensive peace deal and were instead exploring a temporary memorandum or interim arrangement meant to keep the confrontation from snapping back into conflict. The latest round in Islamabad ended after about 21 hours with no agreement, and the talks are now hanging over a fragile ceasefire set to expire on April 22, 2026.

The stakes are not abstract. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, has become a central pressure point in the standoff. Iranian state media said on April 18 that the strait had been closed again to commercial vessels after earlier being declared open, and that some ships attempting to pass were fired upon. BBC reporting said about 3,000 ships move through the waterway each month and that roughly 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows through it.

Any disruption would not stop at geopolitics. It would reach household budgets far beyond the Middle East, pushing up petrol costs and adding pressure to food and electronics prices. For families already absorbing inflation, the fallout would be felt unevenly, with lower-income communities and import-dependent countries paying the fastest and heaviest price.

The current push is also unusually rare. AP and PBS News said the exchanges are the highest-level U.S.-Iran contacts since before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. That makes the demand for concrete next steps more urgent, not less. If the talks are moving toward de-escalation, the public signals that would matter most are simple: a set date, a shared framework, a verifiable ceasefire extension, and clear limits on what each side is willing to suspend. Without those, “progress” remains a claim, not a settlement.