The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping channel for 20% of the world's crude oil. Photo / Getty Images
US President Donald Trump says Iran has “no cards” in upcoming talks with the United States – apart from Tehran’s effective stranglehold on the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping channel.
“The Iranians don’t seem to realise they have no cards, other than a short-term extortion of the World by using International Waterways,” Trump said on his Truth Social network.
“The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”
In a separate social media message, the 79-year-old said: “The Iranians are better at handling the Fake News Media, and ‘Public Relations,’ than they are at fighting!”
Control of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s crude oil passes, will be at the heart of peace talks between the United States and Iran in Pakistan on Saturday (local time).
Iran and the United States said the crucial channel would reopen after a two-week truce was announced on Tuesday, but Tehran’s threats mean few ships are passing through.
Trump said on Thursday that Iran was doing a “very poor job” of allowing oil through the waterway, adding: “That is not the agreement we have!”
His “no cards” comments about Iran echoed his notorious broadside at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February when he raged that “you don’t have the cards” against Russia.
Separately on Friday, Trump told the New York Post that US warships are being reloaded with weaponry to strike Iran if the talks fail to produce a deal.
“We have a reset going. We’re loading up the ships with the best ammunition, the best weapons ever made – even better than what we did previously and we blew them apart,” the Post quoted Trump as saying.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them, and we will be using them very effectively.”
In a brief and cryptic social media message earlier, Trump had spoken of the “WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!!”
Vice-President JD Vance headed to Islamabad on Friday to lead the US delegation in this weekend’s talks with Iran, warning Tehran not to “play” Washington.
“We’re going to try to have a positive negotiation,” Vance told reporters before take-off from Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.
“If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
In addition to the Strait of Hormuz, other sticking points include US demands that Iran give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and Iran’s aim to prevent further US and Israeli attacks.
The talks are being held in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
The host Government has kept its cards close to its chest without confirming the venue, but the Serena Hotel,next to the foreign ministry in the capital’s high-security Red Zone, asked its guests to clear out on Wednesday.
The same day authorities in the capital announced a two-day public holiday on Thursday and Friday.
The talks themselves are expected to be indirect: the two delegations sitting in separate rooms with Pakistani officials shuttling proposals between them, mirroring the format used in earlier Oman-mediated rounds.
Vance will lead the American team, joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.
It marks the most senior US engagement with Iran since Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal. Witkoff held multiple rounds of Oman-mediated talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi before the war cut the process short.
A delegation of top Iranian officials has arrived in Islamabad ahead of ceasefire talks with the United States in the Pakistani capital, Iranian state television has reported.
The delegation was led by Iran parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other security and economic officials, state broadcaster IRIB said on its website. It reiterated Iran’s position, however, that talks would only begin if Washington accepts Iran’s preconditions.
Ghalibaf earlier set a ceasefire in Lebanon and the “release of Iran’s blocked assets” as conditions for the start of negotiations with the United States.
– Agence France-Presse