Trump threatens Iran with fresh strikes as Vance attends talks in Switzerland

[BUERGENSTOCK/DUBAI] US President Donald Trump on Sunday (Jun 21) threatened to restart war with Iran even as Vice-President JD Vance met Iranian officials for the first talks under a peace deal.

The talks in the Swiss mountain resort of Buergenstock owned by mediator Qatar were the first to be held under the terms of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreed a week ago. The talks, however, were overshadowed by Teheran’s announcement that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz.

The MOU calls for the strait to be reopened and a halt to all hostilities, including in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded in March.

But Iran, arguing that Washington had failed to meet its commitment to halt fighting in Lebanon, said it had shut the strait again and that Sunday’s talks would not cover substantive issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to an escalation he had ordered earlier in June.

At the talks, where US and Iranian officials met in the presence of Qatari mediators, Vance played down the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying that progress had been made towards ending hostilities there in recent days.

“These things are always a little bit messy,” the vice-president said.

Despite the announcement of a new ceasefire in Lebanon on Friday, there has been scant sign of an end to fighting there.

Iran said on Saturday that as a result, it had again shut the strait, whose closure for nearly four months caused the biggest disruption of global energy supplies in history.

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US officials disputed whether the strait was again shut, but commercially available shipping data showed an immediate impact. Only a single small tanker crossed the strait with its location-signalling transponders on after Iran’s announcement, compared with dozens of ships in recent days when traffic had begun returning to pre-war levels.

Iran’s Fars news agency cited a military source as saying on Sunday that no new permits were being issued for ships to cross until further notice. Throughout the war, many shipping companies have said it was too dangerous to sail through the strait without Iran’s permission.

Iran also said there could be no start to the next phase of talks, including over its nuclear programme, until Lebanon fighting ends and it gets promised economic benefits.

Earlier on Sunday, Vance briefly appeared in front of travelling media as he, envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir.

Warm greetings were exchanged; Vance said “What’s up man?“ as he shook hands with Munir and hugged him. “My brother,” Munir said as he reached out to Witkoff and embraced him.

Shutting Hormuz could reserve oil price falls

As has happened several times with major developments affecting the global economy during the war, Iran’s announcement that the Strait of Hormuz was again shut took place on the weekend with markets closed, delaying any impact on oil prices until Monday.

Trump said he agreed to the MOU to avert a global economic depression from high oil prices caused by shutting the strait. Oil prices had tumbled over the past week to levels unseen since the war started.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, said that Sunday’s talks would last for just one day.

Since Washington had failed to guarantee a ceasefire in Lebanon, the talks would cover only the implementation of the memorandum itself and not the substantive issues foreseen for the next stage of negotiations, he added.

Vance hopes for progress

The MOU foresees 60 days of talks on issues such as curbing Iran’s nuclear programme in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Before those issues are resolved, Iran expects to receive initial economic benefits, such as sanctions waivers and the unfreezing of blocked assets.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, quoted by Fars, expressed optimism that talks with the US could provide a strong basis for economic growth. He said the first achievement of the negotiations was restoring access to some of Iran’s financial resources.

Vance had told reporters before his departure that he hoped to make progress on the nuclear issue, as well as a ceasefire in Lebanon.

More than a million people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon since March by Israel’s invasion.

However, in a possibly positive sign on Sunday, Reuters journalists in southern Lebanon saw some of the heaviest traffic since the MOU was signed, with residents returning to homes they had fled in the south. Some stood beside cars backed up on the highway and waved Hizbollah flags.

Reuters journalists in southern Lebanon also saw rescuers on Saturday carrying the wounded at the sites of Israeli attacks, which have reduced swathes of Lebanese towns and villages to ruins of concrete rubble that residents say resemble the Gaza Strip.

Lebanese authorities said that 20 people were killed on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of major violence on Sunday morning.

The army said on Sunday that specialised units were still working to dismantle unexploded Israeli bombs weighing 1,000 and 2,000 pounds that had been dropped on southern towns. REUTERS