Trump insists Iran deal imminent after talks stall over nuclear program

Donald Trump is pressing ahead with claims that a deal with Iran is just days away, even as Tehran refuses to give the core commitment Washington wants: no nuclear weapon, now or later. The gap between Trump’s public certainty and Iran’s resistance has become the central question hanging over the talks, which ended in Islamabad, Pakistan, after about 21 hours without an agreement.

Vice President JD Vance said the Iranians would not give an affirmative commitment that they would not seek a nuclear weapon. That remains the U.S. red line, along with stopping any path to quickly producing one. The issues on the table also included uranium enrichment and the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries a huge share of global shipping and has become a pressure point in the widening confrontation.

Trump has kept projecting momentum. In a Fox Business interview aired Tuesday, he said, “I think it can be over very soon.” He also told a New York Post reporter that “something could be happening over the next two days,” while praising Pakistan’s role in the diplomacy. But negotiators left Pakistan without a deal, and no further round has been publicly announced.

The talks were the highest-level direct meeting between American and Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which makes the failure more significant, not less. Pakistani, Egyptian and Turkish mediators are still trying to bridge the remaining gaps before the current ceasefire expires on April 21. The effort is unfolding under the threat of a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint whose disruption has already rattled markets and raised fears of shortages in key agricultural commodities and helium.

Iran has also already shown little appetite for the U.S. terms. It rejected a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal on April 6, and Iranian state media said Tehran’s counterproposal included 10 demands, among them sanctions relief, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz and a lasting regional ceasefire. The Institute for the Study of War said Trump had threatened strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure and bridges if no agreement was reached by April 7. That history helps explain the credibility gap now opening between Trump’s insistence that a deal is imminent and Tehran’s insistence that the core nuclear issue is still unresolved.