It was if the two delegations in the Iran-US peace talks in Islamabad hoped that the sheer number of negotiators flown into Pakistan could overcome the handicap of having only a finite number of hours in which to settle a 20-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, now overlaid by complex new issues such as future control of the strait of Hormuz and US compensation for its attack on Iran. Iran sent two planeloads of negotiators, including many members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) present to ensure that no gains made in the field were relinquished at the diplomatic table.
Diplomats fanned out across political, legal, security, economic and military files. One Iranian-drafted technical explanation on nuclear facility safety ran to more than 100 pages.
The US, often accused of leaving talks to the “noteless” special envoy Steve Witkoff, sent not just the vice-president, JD Vance, but nearly 300 other officials. It was if it finally realised that the Iranian negotiating team, including figures such as Ali Bagheri Kani, the deputy secretary of the supreme national security council and the chief negotiator in previous nuclear talks, and Abbas Araghchi, the chief negotiator in 2015 and now the foreign minister, might be on top of their brief.
Vance spoke to Donald Trump at least a dozen times during the talks, and even once to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a conversation Araghchi was quick to claim led to a hardening of the US position. But it was probably unrealistic to expect issues that took up two years of negotiations in Vienna between 2013 and 2015 over the nuclear deal to be resolved in one marathon session.
Robert Malley, a veteran of nuclear talks with Iran under Joe Biden, noted pithily: “Twenty-one hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate.” Another US state department veteran, Aaron David Miller, noted if the administration believed that after only 21 hours of negotiations Iran would give up enrichment – which is what Vance implied – it totally misread the moment and the Iranian delegation.