US Called Netanyahu From Islamabad. He Says, "The Explosion Came From..."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disclosed the contents of a telephone conversation with United States Vice President JD Vance that took place immediately after the American delegation left marathon peace talks in Islamabad. 

The call, according to Netanyahu, was made by Vance from his plane en route back from the Pakistani capital and has become the focal point of competing narratives about why negotiations between Washington and Tehran collapsed without agreement.

Netanyahu gave his account during a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Monday. 

"I spoke yesterday with Vice President JD Vance. He called me from his plane back from Islamabad. He reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day, about the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations," Netanyahu said. 

According to Netanyahu, "the explosion in the negotiations" originated on the American side because it "could not tolerate Iran's blatant violation of the agreement to enter the negotiations". That agreement, he said, required an immediate ceasefire and the immediate opening of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. Tehran did not comply. 

"The explosion came from the American side, which could not tolerate Iran's blatant violation of the agreement to enter the negotiations. The agreement was that they would cease fire, and the Iranians would immediately open the gates. They did not do that. The Americans could not accept that," the Israeli Prime Minister said.  

Vance, Netanyahu continued, had made clear that the central issue for President Donald Trump and the United States remained "the removal of all enriched material, and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and that could be for decades, no enrichment inside Iran".

"That is their focus, and of course it is also important to us," he added.

He went on to state that, because of Iran's violation, Trump had decided to impose a naval blockade on the country.

"We of course support this aggressive position, and we are coordinating with the United States all the time," Netanyahu said. He described claims of any disconnect between Jerusalem and Washington as "the complete opposite" of reality. 

"Everyone who was around this conversation, and around the daily conversations we have with the president and his people, his team members, was talking about this. This is coordination that never existed, there is something here that never existed. It never existed in the history of the state, and it never existed in the history of the Jewish people: we have coordination with the most powerful power in the world, and we have the ability to repel the dangers of annihilation," he said. 

The Israeli prime minister also used the cabinet meeting to update his ministers on the situation in Lebanon. He said he had visited Israeli forces the previous day in the security zone in southern Lebanon, where he met reservists and commanders.

"They are doing an incredible job there," he said. "With a strong spirit, with great determination, and with great successes that must of course be recognised."

The troops, he said, were pushing the "enemy" away from the border and establishing "a solid, deeper security zone, which also prevents the danger of invasion and keeps the threat of anti-tank weapons away". 

Iran's account of events is markedly different because within hours of Vance's departure from Islamabad, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi posted on X that a call from Netanyahu to Vance "during the meeting" had shifted the focus of the negotiations from US-Iran issues to Israel's interests. 

"The US tried to achieve at the negotiating table what it could not achieve through war," Araghchi wrote. He said Iran had entered the Pakistan-hosted talks in good faith and described Vance's press conference before leaving as "unnecessary". Tehran, he added, remained "committed and prepared to safeguard our nation's interest and sovereignty".