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High-level talks between Iran and the United States resulted in “a lot of good progress,” Vice President JD Vance said as he left Switzerland on Monday after the two sides agreed on a road map toward reaching a final deal to end the war within 60 days.
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“We laid a very good foundation for a successful final deal,” Vance said at a press briefing before departing for the U.S. “The final deal is the house. We set the foundation. We haven’t built the house, but we’ve laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people,” he said.
Technical negotiations were continuing in the mountaintop resort of Bürgenstock after a first round of marathon talks between senior figures from both countries. They had got off to a rough start, first canceled and then shaken by President Donald Trump’s renewed threats.
Vance confirmed that Iran had threatened to walk out over those comments, but he defended Trump. “What we told the Iranians yesterday is when you guys engage in what us millennials might call ‘trash talk,’ you can’t expect the president of the United States not to respond and not to correct the record,” Vance said.
The talks ultimately resulted in a joint statement released by mediators Qatar and Pakistan that struck a similarly positive tone, describing a “constructive atmosphere.” Washington and Tehran agreed to to set up new communication lines to ensure the vital Strait of Hormuz is open and end fighting in Lebanon, mediators said.
Vance said that Iran had agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) back into the country.
He also said that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner came up with “a very interesting solution” to unfreezing Iran’s assets that would involve the U.S. and Qatari approval and then the use of the money for purchases of U.S. soy, corn and wheat. He said this was a “classic Trump deal.”
Iran’s semiofficial Mehr News Agency reported Monday that the negotiating team, headed by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has departed from Switzerland “after approximately 18 hours of intensive talks and consultations.” But the agency said Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi was heading the Iranian team in technical talks.
The new talks are meant to resolve some of the thorniest issues in the deal that are yet to be agreed upon, including Iran’s nuclear program.
One of the main outcomes of Sunday’s talks was the establishment of a “High Level Committee” with political oversight of mediation, which agreed on a road map “towards reaching a final deal within 60 days, laying the foundation for the immediate commencement of further technical talks” on nuclear weapons, sanctions and dispute resolution, the joint statement said.
The talks also led to the creation of a deconfliction line between the parties and Lebanon, it said. Fighting in southern Lebanon between Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel has continued even as talks in Switzerland progressed. Vance said Monday the U.S. was in “constant contact” with Israel during the talks, after the U.S> ally was effectively shut out of the negotiation process.
A communication line has also been set up to prevent “incidents and miscommunication,” it added, to allow safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global supply route for oil which has been blockaded for months.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on X on Monday that the first meeting of the committee had “concluded successfully” in Bürgenstock.
The Swiss Foreign Ministry said it welcomed constructive progress made during the “intensive diplomatic talks” that it said continued throughout the night. It called the establishment of the committee a “positive step, which will help to structure the next phase of the political and technical process.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi warned in a post on X on Monday that the deconfliction cell will be the first “real test” of the new progress, as he also touted “major progress to end [the] Lebanon War,” and noted progress on oil exports, frozen Iranian assets and major reconstruction plans for Iran.
Global oil prices fell Monday after the talks concluded in Switzerland, easing worries about a supply shortage in global markets.
But the talks had been jolted by new threats from Trump, who warned the U.S. could resume attacks on Iran as Tehran once again shut down the Strait of Hormuz, citing ceasefire violations by Israel in Lebanon.
On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that “we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” unless it stops “their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon,” referring to Hezbollah.
And in a phone interview Sunday morning with Fox News, Trump said he spoke with Iran overnight, delivering a stark warning that if it closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. will “blow the s— out of them.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei warned Monday that Tehran will no longer negotiate directly if such threats continue, the hard-line Student News Network reported.
Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.
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