Iran Round 2 Talks Open as Witkoff Arrives

The backdrop is a war that began on 28 February 2026, when U.S. and Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes on Iran in what the Pentagon called Operation Epic Fury. The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei along with the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force. Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's son, was subsequently named as his replacement but had made no public appearance as of 26 April. A U.S. naval blockade of all ships linked to Iranian interests has been in place across the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April, cutting Iran's primary oil export route and costing the country an estimated $400 million per day in lost revenue, according to a 22 April 2026 estimate by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

“and Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes on Iran in what the Pentagon called Operation Epic Fury.”

U.S. demands include: complete dismantlement of Iran's uranium enrichment program; removal of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium from the country; limits on ballistic missile development; the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; and an end to Iranian material support for Hezbollah and Hamas. In exchange, the Trump administration has offered phased sanctions relief and security guarantees. The sticking point — the one neither side has publicly bridged — is enrichment itself. Iran insists on the right to enrich uranium domestically, a position it reads as protected under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for non-withdrawing signatories. Trump publicly claimed last week that Tehran had agreed to allow the U.S. to remove its enriched uranium stockpile. Araghchi responded within hours: "No such agreement exists."

Pakistan's mediation role is itself a diplomatic anomaly. Islamabad and Tehran share a border and a Sunni-Shia sectarian tension that has periodically produced serious friction. Pakistan's military establishment has historically been closer to Washington than to any Persian Gulf power. Field Marshal Munir's prominent involvement signals how far the Trump administration has leaned on non-Western intermediaries in this conflict, bypassing both the Europeans and the Gulf Cooperation Council states that facilitated the 2015 JCPOA process entirely.

Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington who has covered Iranian politics for three decades, pushed back on the Trump administration's characterization of Iran's government as "seriously fractured" in a Truth Social post last week. "The team around Mojtaba Khamenei has been working together for 15 years," Slavin told Al Jazeera on 24 April 2026. "They are not fractured. They are adapting." Al Jazeera's Tehran correspondent Ali Hashem separately reported that Iranian state media has maintained a unified public line on the nuclear talks — more disciplined, not less, than in the weeks immediately following the February strikes. The unified messaging complicates any U.S. strategy premised on internal Iranian pressure producing concessions.

**What this means**

For global energy markets, the Islamabad talks' progress is the single most important variable in oil price movements through June 2026. A diplomatic framework that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz would send Brent crude from above $105 toward $75–$80, according to estimates published by Goldman Sachs's commodities research team on 18 April 2026. A breakdown in talks would likely push Brent past $120. The Federal Reserve, under new Chair Kevin Warsh confirmed by the Senate on 21 April, is explicitly factoring the talks' trajectory into its May 7 rate-setting deliberations, treating geopolitical commodity volatility as a key inflation variable.

For the global economy, the IMF's April 2026 World Economic Outlook estimated that the Iran conflict has already cost 0.3 percentage points of global GDP growth — and noted that every additional month of Hormuz disruption at current levels adds approximately 0.1 percentage points to the cumulative toll.

"Iran has discovered new leverage in its control of the Strait of Hormuz," Slavin told Al Jazeera on 24 April. "And leverage, once discovered, is very hard to give up." The outcome of the Islamabad talks — expected to run through 27 April — will determine whether that leverage is the foundation for a deal or the obstacle to one.