The US has no backup plan if the talks with Iran fail, President Donald Trump has said, as high-level delegations from the two sides meet today in Islamabad to discuss ending the war in the Middle East. The warning came in response to a question on if Washington has a Plan B ready in case the US-Iran negotiations collapse or Tehran refuses to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

"You don't need a backup plan. Their military is defeated. We have integrated everything. They have very few missiles. They have very few manufacturing capabilities. We have hit them very hard. Our military is amazing; the job they have done," the US President told reporters this morning.

An Iranian delegation landed in Islamabad in the wee hours of Saturday for talks with the US, as the world keeps its fingers crossed for an agreement to end the conflict between the two sides.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, while announcing a two-week ceasefire on Wednesday, had said that the US and Iran would hold talks in Islamabad, tagging the presidents of the US and Iran in his statement on X.

US Vice President JD Vance's flight reaches Ujbekistan airspace.

Blood-soaked school bags, shoes, white flowers, and pictures of the Minab victims accompanied an Iranian delegation led by Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to Pakistan for peace talks with the United States. The relics of the war sat in the front row of the flight to Islamabad, echoing the human cost of the conflict in the Middle East.

It was a war JD Vance never wanted. Now the US vice president has been tasked with ending it.

Vance heads to Pakistan this week with orders from President Donald Trump to turn the shaky Iran ceasefire into a lasting peace deal.

For the 41-year-old Vance, who has kept a notably low profile during the Middle East conflict, it will be one of the biggest moments of his career.

But the man widely regarded as a leading contender in the 2028 US presidential election will face huge challenges too when talks begin Saturday in Islamabad.

"I cannot think of a case where the vice president ran formal negotiations like this," Aaron Wolf Mannes, a lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and an expert on the American vice presidency's role in foreign policy, told AFP.

"This is high risk, high reward."

Pope Leo XIV amplified his condemnation of the US-Israeli war with Iran on Friday, saying that “God does not bless any conflict” and certainly doesn't side with those who drop bombs.

"The preconditions have been accepted," Iran Embassy in South Africa shared on social media hours before US-Iran peace talks in Islamabad.

The two-week ceasefire that enabled the negotiations to take place is still in effect, but its stability remains uncertain. Israel's intense strikes on Hezbollah and ongoing disputes about whether Lebanon should be part of the agreement continue to threaten the process.

The Trump administration has developed its own 15-point framework, but the details remain undisclosed. The package reportedly calls for Iran to renounce nuclear weapons, surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, accept limits on its military capabilities, and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials arrived in Pakistan on Friday for peace talks with the United States as Tehran insisted on a truce in Lebanon and unfreezing of its assets for the negotiations to go ahead.

US President Donald Trump vowed meanwhile to have the Strait of Hormuz open "with or without" Iran's cooperation and said his top priority at the Islamabad talks was to ensure the Islamic republic cannot have a nuclear weapon.

Trump has dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Pakistan to meet with the Iranians in a bid to reach a peace deal in the Middle East war following a two-week ceasefire that was agreed on Tuesday.

(AFP)

Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf shared a picture from his flight to Islamabad where negotiation talks will be held with US. The picture shows bload soaked schools bags, shoes placed on the seats with pictures of children killed in US-Israel strike.