Kushner and Witkoff to talk with Iranian officials in Pakistan

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, two of the United States’ lead negotiators in peace talks with Iran, will travel to Pakistan on Saturday to hold discussions with Iranian officials, an administration spokesperson said. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, also announced a visit to Islamabad, and Iranian officials said he planned to meet with the two U.S. representatives.

“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday afternoon. “We hope progress will be made,” she said, adding that “the president, the vice president, the secretary of state will be waiting here in the United States for updates.”

The Iranian foreign minister plans to present a new written response to a U.S. proposal for a peace deal, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with the trip who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.

The news came as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ships and ports would continue for “as long as it takes” to get Iran to agree to a deal. Iranian leaders have made lifting the blockade a condition of resuming peace talks with Washington.

Other developments

-- Strait of Hormuz: Hostilities between Iran and the United States have shifted to the waters in and around the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial conduit for Persian Gulf oil and gas, since a ceasefire began more than two weeks ago. Trump recently extended that ceasefire indefinitely, but both sides have recently seized vessels they said were violating their restrictions on shipping.

-- Oil prices: Oil prices remain high compared with before the war. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was trading around $105 a barrel Friday afternoon.

-- Lebanon: The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, a day after Trump announced a three-week extension of the ceasefire there. Under the terms of that ceasefire, Israel can act in self-defense but not carry out offensive operations against Lebanese targets. Ali Fayyad, a senior lawmaker affiliated with Hezbollah, said in a statement that the truce’s extension did not hold “any meaning in light of Israel’s continued escalation of hostile acts.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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