Vice President JD Vance opened a crucial new round of peace negotiations with Iran on Sunday, aiming for a positive note. But the uphill nature of the talks was dramatized by the fact that the two sides faced immediate hurdles over the unresolved conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
That prompted President Trump to threaten Iran with renewed bombing if it did not rein in its proxy, Hezbollah, which he accused of “causing trouble.”
“If they don’t,” he said of Iran in a social media post, “we’ll hit them hard again.”
Meeting in Switzerland at a grand, high-altitude resort overlooking Lake Lucerne, the U.S. and Iranian delegations were here ostensibly to seek a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. But first they had to grapple with the situation in Lebanon, as well as the disputed status of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran claims the United States reneged on the agreement signed by Mr. Trump last week by failing to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, despite the announcement of a cease-fire on Friday. Israel and Hezbollah, neither of which signed the preliminary agreement, exchanged fire on Saturday.
The skirmishing in Lebanon cast a shadow over the biggest short-term dividend of the initial deal: the reopening of the strait. Iran said on Saturday that it had closed the waterway in response to the continued fighting. The U.S. Navy said that marine traffic continued to flow and that Iran was not in control of the strait.
The conflicting claims underscored the fragility of the preliminary deal between the United States and Iran, and the uphill nature of the work that their negotiators now face. Not only must they figure out how to curb the actions of other players, like Israel and Hezbollah, they also must dig into the highly technical issues like how to move or dilute Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.
Mr. Vance played down the risk posed by Lebanon.
“We’ve seen great progress over the last couple of days in ensuring that the cease-fire holds in Lebanon,” he told reporters before the main negotiating session began. “These things are always a little bit messy.”
Offering what he characterized as an “outstretched hand” to the Iranian people, Mr. Vance said the negotiations could transform Iran’s relationship with the United States after nearly a half century of hostility.
“If your leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions in the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship with that country,” Mr. Vance declared.
In a stream of social media posts and reports on state-linked media, Iranian officials emphasized that their paramount objective in this round of meetings was to insure a cease-fire in Lebanon. The spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, posted that Iran also wanted to discuss measures to free up its oil exports and release its frozen assets, which are in the framework agreement.
For Mr. Vance, the political stakes in the negotiations are high. His earlier reservations about full-scale military action against Iran are well known and, as the leader of the American delegation in Switzerland, he has now become the public face of diplomacy for the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has mused that his vice president could be a convenient fall guy if the negotiations go awry.
“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Mr. Trump said jokingly last week at the end of a Group of 7 summit meeting in Évian-les-Bains, France. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”
Mr. Vance told reporters before leaving Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Saturday night that he planned to stay only a day or two in Switzerland. He was joined here by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s special envoys, who had traveled to Lucerne ahead of him.
Hours before Mr. Vance arrived, Iran’s negotiating team landed in Switzerland. It is headed by the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the lead negotiator in past talks, and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, a veteran of nuclear negotiations during the Obama administration.
Iran’s agenda for this session is deliberately less ambitious than that of the United States, according to diplomats and analysts. Some said it was not even clear they were prepared to engage in substantive talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
“Negotiations succeed when there’s a shared urgency,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has worked as a Middle East peace negotiator. “Iran’s not in a hurry.”
Iran’s negotiators, Mr. Miller said, had already achieved three significant objectives without making a major concession: an end to American and Israeli military strikes on their country, the removal of sanctions on Iranian oil, and the lifting of the United States’ blockage of the Strait of Hormuz
“They’re in Switzerland to see if they can’t get more on Lebanon — to protect Hezbollah, their billion-dollar proxy, and maybe trigger a rift between Trump and Netanyahu,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “and maybe to see what they need to do to get Trump to unfreeze some assets.”
Leo Sands and Pranav Baskar contributed reporting.
