Kushner, Witkoff to restart talks with Iran in Pakistan — without Vance

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, will travel to Pakistan on Saturday to restart negotiations to end the war with Iran, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Friday.

Vice President JD Vance, who joined Witkoff and Kushner in peace talks with Iranian officials earlier this month in Islamabad, will not be traveling to Pakistan but will be “on standby” to join the negotiations.

“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House. “The president, the vice president, the secretary of State, will be waiting here in the United States for updates, and the vice president, I understand, is on standby and will be willing to dispatch to Pakistan if we feel it’s a necessary use of his time.”

Leavitt suggested that the U.S. and Iran are closer to an agreement but declined to share details when asked whether the Trump administration has received a peace proposal from Iranian leaders.

“We’ve certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days,” she said.

Iran’s willingness to resume negotiations with the U.S. marks a shift in their posture from earlier this week, when Iran refused to send its negotiating team to Islamabad in protest of the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Hours later, Trump extended the blockade indefinitely while agreeing to extend the ceasefire between the two countries.

The new talks come as Trump and administration officials indicate that the war could drag on longer than the president initially suggested when it started in February. When asked about the timeline for ending the war, Trump told reporters on Thursday, “Don’t rush me.”

Trump also suggested he would be willing to tolerate higher fuel prices caused by the conflict “for a little while” in exchange for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Already, gasoline is about $1 per gallon higher than before the conflict began, a worrying sign for Republicans ahead of the November midterms.

Earlier on Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continued to threaten additional strikes on Iranian targets and said the U.S. has “all the time in the world” to achieve its goals in Iran.

Vance’s previous trip to Islamabad represented the highest-level negotiations between U.S. and Iran leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But Vance returned from the trip empty handed, insisting that any agreement must include a commitment from Iran to not pursue the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.