Dar also reiterated Islamabad’s desire to continue facilitating the parties to reach a “lasting and durable solution to the conflict,” according to a statement from Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
Israel and Lebanon will start talks on Tuesday in Washington to discuss a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, according to a statement from the Lebanese president's office. The US will mediate the conversation.
The two countries will meet at the US State Department "to seek an announcement on a ceasefire and a date to begin direct negotiations", President Joseph Aoun's office wrote.
A call reportedly took place on Friday between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors in the US, along with the US ambassador to Lebanon, to organise the conversation.
Senior US and Iranian leaders were in Islamabad for negotiations to end their six-week-old war, although Tehran threw the talks into doubt by saying they could not begin without commitments on Lebanon and sanctions.
The US delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance and including President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, landed in two US air force planes at an air base in Islamabad on Saturday morning, Pakistani sources said.
Vance held talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif later on Saturday, the White House and Sharif’s office said, with Witkoff and Kushner also taking part.
“Prime Minister expressed the hope that these talks would serve as a stepping stone toward durable peace in the region,” Sharif’s office said.
The Iranian delegation, led by parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, arrived on Friday.
Qalibaf said shortly after arriving in Pakistan’s capital that previous experiences negotiating with the US had led to a lack of trust, AFP reported.
“We have good intentions but we do not trust,” Iranian state media quoted him as saying.
“Our experience in negotiating with the Americans has always been met with failure and broken promises,” he added.
These will be the highest-level US-Iran talks since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two sides since 2015, when the two sides reached a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump scrapped the nuclear deal in 2018 during his first term in office. That same year, Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the war six weeks ago, banned further direct talks between US and Iranian officials.
Police personnel patrol near the Serena Hotel, the expected venue for the US–Iran peace talks, at the Red Zone area in Islamabad on April 11, 2026. (AFP
Qalibaf said on X that Washington had previously agreed to unblock Iranian assets and to a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israeli attacks on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants have killed nearly 2,000 people since the start of the fighting in March. He said talks would not start until those pledges were fulfilled.
Israel and the US have said the Lebanon campaign is not part of the Iran-US ceasefire while Tehran insists it is.
Qalibaf said separately that Iran was ready to reach a deal if Washington offered what he described as a genuine agreement and granted Iran its rights, Iranian state media reported.
The White House did not immediately comment on the Iranian demands, but Trump posted on social media that the only reason the Iranians were alive was to negotiate a deal.
“The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!” he said.
Vance, speaking as he headed to Pakistan, said he expected a positive outcome but added: “If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Islamabad was under an unprecedented lockdown on Saturday with thousands of paramilitary personnel and army troops on the streets ahead of what Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called “make-or-break” talks.
Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the war on Tuesday, which has halted US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
But it has not ended Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or calmed the parallel war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Israeli ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, and his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, will hold talks in Washington on Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese officials said, amid the conflicting accounts on what those talks would cover.
Lebanon’s presidency said the two had held a phone call on Friday and agreed to discuss announcing a ceasefire and setting a start date for bilateral talks under US mediation. But Israel’s embassy in Washington said the talks would constitute the start of “formal peace negotiations” and that Israel had refused to discuss a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
Israeli attacks continued across southern Lebanon on Friday. One strike on a government building in the city of Nabatieh killed 13 members of Lebanon’s state security forces, President Joseph Aoun said in a statement.
Hezbollah said in a statement on its Telegram channel that it fired rocket salvos at northern Israeli towns in response. Hours after the ceasefire was announced, Israel launched the biggest attack of the war, killing more than 350 people in surprise strikes on heavily populated areas, Lebanese authorities said.
Tehran’s agenda at the talks also includes demands for major new concessions, including the end of sanctions that crippled its economy for years, and acknowledgment of its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, where it aims to collect transit fees and control access in what would amount to a huge shift in regional power.
Iran’s ships were sailing through the strait unimpeded on Friday, while those of other countries remained hemmed inside.
Disruption to energy supplies has fed inflation and slowed the global economy, with an impact expected to last for months even if negotiators succeed in reopening the strait.
The hard line taken by Iran’s leaders ahead of the negotiations followed a defiant message from its new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Thursday.
Khamenei, yet to be seen in public since taking over from his father, who was killed on the war’s first day, said Iran would demand compensation for all wartime damage.
“We will certainly not leave unpunished the criminal aggressors who attacked our country,” he said.
Although Trump has declared victory and degraded Iran’s military capabilities, the war has not achieved many of the aims he set out at the start: to deprive Iran of the ability to strike its neighbors, dismantle its nuclear program, and make it easier for its people to overthrow their government.
Iran still possesses missiles and drones capable of hitting its neighbors and a stockpile of more than 400kg of uranium enriched near the level needed to make a bomb. Its clerical rulers, who faced a popular uprising just months ago, withstood the onslaught with no sign of organized opposition.
The Iranian delegation has arrived in Islamabad ahead of scheduled peace talks with the US on Saturday.
Pakistan has been acting as intermediary between Iran and the US over the last few weeks. It has a historic relationship with Iran while US President Donald Trump says the head of Pakistan's armed forces, Asim Munir, knows Iran "better than most".
Trump said the US had received a 10-point proposal from Iran which he described as "a workable basis on which to negotiate"
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also mentioned a 15-point proposal that Trump's chief negotiators have said could end the conflict.
Neither set of proposals has been formally unveiled – even though reported versions of both have been leaked - but appear to be oceans apart, our diplomatic correspondent reports.
Israel's strikes on Lebanon continue to cast doubt on peace talks. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, and on Wednesday, its military bombed targets across the country, leaving more then 300 people dead, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
On Friday evening, Lebanon said they would discuss a ceasefire with Israel next week in Washington.
US Vice-President JD Vance also arrived at Islamabad to represent the US in the discussions, along with special envoy Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.