Talks, threats, and turbulence: Trump sends team back to Pakistan as defiant Iran stares him down

TOI correspondent from Washington: A high-level American team is heading back to Pakistan on Monday for a second round of talks with Iran amid renewed threats by US President Donald Trump that he will destroy every bridge and every power plant if Teheran does not make a deal with Washington.

Iran has not confirmed that its team will return to Pakistan for the talks, suggesting that it will not do so until the US navy lifts its blockade of the Hormuz Strait and agrees to negotiate on other Iranian demands such as lifting of sanctions, unfreezing its frozen assets, and a permanent end to war. Even though Trump announced the US visit even as he made dire threats, Iran was still ascertaining from Pakistan, whose military ruler Asim Munir made an apparently fruitless three-day visit to Teheran last week, if its red lines would be respected.

For that matter, there was confusion in Washington too over the composition of the US team and its brief for the talks. Trump initially said vice-president JD Vance would not be leading the team consisting of his special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, ostensibly because of security concerns on part of the Secret Service arising from a short-notice trip, but the White House later said Vance would be going even though Iran has not confirmed its attendance.

Earlier, the US President set a belligerent, aggressive tone ahead of parleys with yet another tough message to Iran on social media, berating it for firing on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz in violation of the ceasefire agreement as he once again unloaded on Teheran.

“We're offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don't, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Trump warned in a post, a toned down version of his threat two weeks ago to end Iranian civilisation, but one many analysts still see as potential war crime.

“They'll come down fast, they'll come down easy and, if they don't take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT'S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!” Trump added.

Iran’s President Dr Masoud Pezeshkian meanwhile said it is the US which announces who they will assassinate next and then call Iranians terrorists. “Human rights is silent. The UN is asleep. And the international laws they love to cite exist for everyone except the people being bombed,” he countered in one interview

Trump is also being pilloried at home for a ham-handed approach to negotiations without adequate preparatory work, with even US analysts saying his effort to simply bulldoze Iran with threats and invective is not working.

But according to an account in the Wall Street Journal citing senior administration officials, Trump has told aides he wants to appear as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring Iranians to the table.

“It was a language the Iranians would understand. But he was also concerned about the fallout. ‘How’s it playing?’ he asked advisers,” the report quoted one official as saying, referring to Trump’s posts on Easter in which he called Iranian leaders “crazy bastards,” asked them to “open the f–king strait” and threatened to end their civilization, an approach commentators across the word saw as “unhinged.”

The report also said Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the country’s lead diplomat who has been sidelined in the talks with Iran – told others privately it was language that might actually bring the Iranians to negotiate.

But far from being spooked, Teheran has stared down the US at the risk of being pulverized some more, even as Trump has repeatedly suggested the Iranian leadership is divided and his team is negotiating with a more moderate faction that is more inclined to conclude a deal with Washington.

At home though Trump is facing growing criticism for leading the US into yet another distant quagmire, one where by his own admission, Washington has little stake.

“They're helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the US, Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be “the tough guy!” Trump said in his Truth Social post on Sunday, undercutting his own campaign against Iran which ostensibly centers on ensuring the country never gets anywhere close to a nuclear weapon.

There is also brewing backlash in MAGA circles over rising gas prices at home, an issue Trump has sought to brush aside even as he brags about US energy self-sufficiency.

Supporters of vice-president JD Vance are also unhappy that he is being thrown under the bus for talks to defuse a war that was against from the very beginning. Some commentators are surprised that Trump has detailed the vice-president for talks half way across the world while knee-capping him with threats against Iran that diminish prospects of success, particularly after a failed first round. “Sending Vance back to Pakistan after 21 hours of failed talks is like restarting a microwave that already caught fire,” one observer noted tartly on X.