Summary of this article
Vance said the US made its “red lines” clear, but Iran chose not to accept the final offer.
Washington is seeking a long-term commitment from Tehran not to pursue nuclear weapons or the means to develop them quickly.
The US delegation remained in constant contact with President Donald Trump and senior national security officials throughout the talks.
US Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that no agreement had been reached with Iran after 21 hours of negotiations in Pakistan, adding that Tehran had chosen not to accept the US terms.
JD Vance's Full Statement On US-Iran Talks:
"The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America. So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement. We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on. And we've made that as clear as we possibly could, and they have chosen not to accept our terms."
Asked by a reporter about what Iran rejected, Vance said, "Well, I won't go into all the details because I don't want to negotiate in public after we've negotiated for 21 hours in private. But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the core goal of the President of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations. Again, their nuclear programs such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed. But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term? We haven't seen that yet. We hope that we will."
Asked if there was a framework on anything and if the Iranian frozen assets issue came up, Vance said, "We talked about all those issues, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that. And so certainly those things came up. But again, we just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms. I think that we were quite flexible, we were quite accommodating. The President told us, you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal. We did that. And unfortunately, we weren't able to make any headway."
Asked how often he communicated with US President Donald Trump throughout the negotiations and if there were multiple rounds of negotiations, Vance said, "Obviously, we were talking to the President consistently. I don't know how many times we talked to him, a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past 21 hours. We obviously also talked to Admiral (Brad) Cooper, to (US War Secretary) Pete (Hegseth), to (US Secretary of State) Marco (Rubio), to the entire national security team. We talked to (Treasury Secretary) Scott Bessent a number of times. So look, we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith. And we leave here, and we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. We'll see if the Iranians accept it."
