Vance holds talks with Iranian officials as peace deal wobbles

A fragile interim pact to end the war in Iran faced its first major test Sunday as JD Vance sat down with Iranian officials at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucerne. Vance landed at Emmen Air Base outside Lucerne just before 6 a.m. local time and was joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for the first face-to-face meeting under the agreement signed last week.

The Iranian side was led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar were also in the room, with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir taking part in related meetings. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, attended as the talks entered a 60-day sprint to nail down the technical details of the deal.

Those details carry consequences well beyond the Swiss mountains. The most immediate flashpoint was the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran said it had closed the waterway again after what it called U.S. violations and renewed Israeli strikes in Lebanon. U.S. Central Command denied the claim and said shipping remained normal, adding that 55 commercial vessels had safely transited the strait carrying more than 17 million barrels of oil. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy also warned vessels to stay away from the waterway until further notice.

The dispute over the strait came as the political temperature rose further in Washington and Tehran. President Donald Trump threatened to restart strikes on Iran if it kept supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon or tried to close the strait, a warning that reportedly angered Tehran and complicated the opening phase of the negotiations. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Tehran’s main focus would be the fighting between Israel and Lebanon, while President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would not give up its right to enrich uranium.

The weekend violence in Lebanon sharpened the pressure on the talks. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 16 people on Saturday, including two children, underscoring how quickly the regional war could spill back into the diplomacy now unfolding in Switzerland.

For Trump, the negotiations are more than a nuclear bargaining table. Analysts have said the talks carry political weight as his approval ratings have slipped and midterm elections are less than five months away. If the Swiss meeting produces even a narrow path on uranium enrichment, shipping security and Lebanon, it could shape U.S. policy across the Middle East for months to come.