Pakistan has officially delivered President Donald Trump’s 15-point ceasefire proposal to Iran, two Pakistani officials confirmed to the Associated Press. This cements Islamabad’s role as the central mediator in efforts to end the nearly month-long war in West Asia.
The proposal covers sweeping terms: sanctions relief, civilian nuclear cooperation, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear programme, International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring, missile limitations, and guaranteed shipping access through the Strait of Hormuz.
The handover marks the most concrete diplomatic step since the conflict began, and places Pakistan squarely at the centre of what could become the war’s defining negotiation.
How Pakistan Became the War’s Key Broker
Pakistan’s emergence as a mediator didn’t happen overnight. It followed a closed-door meeting in Riyadh last week between the foreign ministers of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, first reported by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. This is where the diplomatic groundwork was laid.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif then went public, announcing on X that Pakistan was ready to host and “facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks.” Trump endorsed the offer within hours, re-sharing Sharif’s post on Truth Social and giving Islamabad the clearest signal yet of Washington’s backing.
Egypt, meanwhile, has played its own backchannel role, it reportedly sending a proposal to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps calling for a five-day pause in hostilities as a pathway to a broader ceasefire.
But it is Pakistan that now holds the most visible and consequential position, serving as the direct channel between Washington and Tehran at a moment when both sides publicly deny that negotiations are even taking place.
What is Trump saying?
Trump, meanwhile, has touted his diplomatic route to end the war that’s costing United States in billions as war victory. “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money,” Trump said of Iran on Tuesday (US time).
Without offering details, he added, “It wasn’t nuclear-related, it was oil and gas-related.” Describing it as “very significant,” he said, “it was related to the flow,” and the strait.
Why Iran wants JD Vance on the negotiation board?
Citing two regional sources, CNN reported that Iranian representatives had informed the Donald Trump administration that they were against re-entering negotiations with special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The message reportedly sent through back channels to the US further insisted that the Iranian side would prefer to engage with Vice President JD Vance instead, as it saw him as more sympathetic to ending the war.
“The perception is that Vance would be intent on wrapping up the conflict,” one of the sources said, as quoted by CNN. Although regional officials claimed they recognised how risky it could be for Vance to enter the discussions, the second source said, “Who the administration decides to send, the Iranians will have to deal with, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have a preference,” as per CNN.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to CNN that only Trump decides who will negotiate on behalf of the US. “President Trump and only President Trump determines who negotiates on behalf of the United States. As the President stated today, Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff, and Mr Kushner will all be involved,” she said.
Another White House official dismissed the Vance-related claims sourced entirely to “regional sources,” branding it “a coordinated foreign propaganda campaign meant to undermine the president,” according to CNN.
Iran rejects claims of negotiations
While multiple international reports continue to suggest that a meeting between the US and Iran may be held in Islamabad later this week, Tehran hasn’t officially confirmed any such claims.
On the contrary, the country’s leadership, endlessly quoted by Iranian state news agencies, has only pointed to the opposite. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi doubled down on the country’s hardline stance on the ongoing war.
Speaking to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on the telephone, he said, “Iran will defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity until all objectives are achieved and the enemy is made to regret its violent aggression,” as quoted by Press TV.
Similarly, the Iranian military also dismissed Trump’s claims of talks in a rather brash way. As per the statement published by the Fars news agency, Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari took a swipe at the US, saying, “Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the state of negotiating with yourselves?”
“Don’t call your failure an agreement,” he added. As a spokesperson of Iran’s Khatam Al-Anbiya central headquarters, he maintained there would be no return to the pre-war oil prices and status quo “until our will is done.”
“This will be created when the thought of taking action against the Iranian nation is completely erased from your dirty minds,” he said. “Our first and last words from day one have been, are and will be: No one like us will get along with someone like you. Not now, not ever.”