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The United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations Saturday in Pakistan, days after a fragile, two-week ceasefire was announced, as the war that has killed thousands of people and shaken global markets entered its seventh week.
The White House confirmed the direct nature of the talks, a rare instance of high-level U.S. government engagement with the Iranian government.
The U.S. has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran proposed by Pakistan, President Trump said Tuesday night.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed Tehran’s acceptance and said Iran would allow “safe passage” of the Strait of Hormuz during those two weeks “via coordination with Iran’s armed forces.”
Iran has fired missiles at the joint U.K.-U.S. Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean, claiming the strike shows it is capable of longer-distance attacks than previously known.
“Iran’s reckless attacks, lashing out across the region and holding hostage the Strait of Hormuz, are a threat to British interests and British allies,” a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense said Saturday, confirming the unsuccessful strike.
United States President Donald Trump has said the country’s military bombed military installations on Iran’s Kharg island, warning the area’s critical oil facilities could be next if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran, in turn, threatened on Saturday to reduce US-linked oil facilities to “a pile of ashes” if oil structures on the island were attacked, as the US-Israel war on Iran, now in its punishing third week, spilled over into a global oil price crisis already in the making.
Kurdish residents of northeast Syria warn Iran’s Kurds against aligning with the US to fight the Iranian government, citing their own experience in Syria in recent months as evidence their Iranian counterparts will be “abandoned.”
Iranian Kurdish militias based in northern Iraq have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether and how to attack security forces in western Iran, as the United States and Israel pound Iran with air strikes, Reuters has reported. US President Donald Trump recently discouraged such an attack.