U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are traveling to Islamabad on Saturday for indirect peace talks with Iran, the White House announced Friday. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had already arrived in the Pakistani capital, received by Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir.
President Trump told Reuters in a phone interview Friday that Iran plans to submit an offer. "They're making an offer and we'll have to see," Trump said, adding that he did not yet know the details. The U.S. has said it is prepared to hear a peace proposal through Pakistani intermediaries.
The talks come as Washington has tightened its economic grip on Tehran. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions Friday on 19 tankers it accused of transporting billions of dollars' worth of Iranian crude oil using a "shadow fleet" that employs questionable ship registrations to evade detection. Sanctions also hit 19 firms operating in Iran's petroleum and petrochemical sectors. The U.S. additionally sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical's Dalian refinery in China, which Treasury called "one of Iran's largest customers for crude oil," accusing it of buying billions in Iranian oil through tankers linked to Iran's armed forces.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Friday that if Iran does not reach a deal, its economy will "collapse under the unrelenting pressure" of a U.S. naval blockade that he said would remain in place "as long as it takes." He added that Tehran still has time to "choose wisely."
Israel is not part of the Pakistan talks, and the process has exposed a deepening tension between Washington and Jerusalem. Trump on Thursday announced a three-week extension to the Lebanon ceasefire without Israeli input. Israeli analysts told Al Jazeera that the outcomes of both the Iran and Lebanon conflicts now appear to be determined more by Trump than by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had spent years pushing for exactly the war against Iran and Hezbollah that was eventually launched.
With both Hezbollah and Iran damaged but still standing, Netanyahu faces domestic political pressure. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute taken just before Trump's ceasefire announcement showed overwhelming support among Jewish Israeli respondents for continuing military operations. A prominent Hezbollah lawmaker said the group "firmly rejects" the three-week ceasefire extension Trump announced.
Israel launched new airstrikes in Lebanon on Friday. The UN human rights office released a report the same day finding that Israeli strikes on populated residential buildings in Lebanon may constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law. The report cited a March 8 strike on a multi-storey building in Sir el-Gharbiyeh that killed at least 13 civilians, including five women, five men, two boys, and a girl. The UN also said Hezbollah's use of unguided rockets that lacked the precision to avoid civilian infrastructure in Israel likely violated international humanitarian law as well. More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched its bombardment. Neither the Israeli military nor Hezbollah responded to the UN findings.
The OHCHR said separately that attacks on journalists could amount to war crimes if deliberate. An Israeli airstrike on Wednesday killed journalist Amal Khalil and wounded her colleague Zeinab Faraj in the village of at-Tiri in southern Lebanon.
