{"id":547323,"date":"2026-06-21T22:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T22:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/547323\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T22:01:09","slug":"iran-suspends-us-talks-amid-renewed-threats-by-trump-against-country-and-negotiating-team-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/547323\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran suspends US talks amid renewed threats by Trump against country and negotiating team \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iranian<\/a> negotiators have suspended high-stakes talks with the US<\/a> in Switzerland<\/a> in protest at a stream of threats issued by US president Donald Trump<\/a> to bomb Iran and even to kidnap the Iranian negotiating team unless the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> is reopened.<\/p>\n

It was not clear if the Iran walkout was permanent or a symbolic show of protest. But before leaving the face-to-face talks in Burgenstock, Iran reached a draft agreement over how the US will issue a waiver lifting sanctions on Iranian oil<\/a> exports, one of the key preconditions before Iran will open talks on its nuclear file.<\/p>\n

Iranian officials claimed the waivers would be issued soon, adding progress had also been made on unfreezing Iranian assets in overseas bank accounts<\/p>\n

Iran and the US last week signed a memorandum of understanding designed to lift the blockade on the strait, leading to 60 days of talks on Iran\u2019s civil nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s stream of aggressive threats on social media and in TV interviews filtered across the Atlantic to the negotiating site, causing anger among the Iranian negotiating team, who said they represented an unacceptable threat to their personal safety. They pointed out the memorandum signed by Trump last week included a non-aggression pact.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s threats contrasted with the tone adopted by his vice-president, JD Vance<\/a>, who said he had been asked by the president to use the talks to turn over a new leaf with Iran.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trump\u2019s Iran deal leaves him facing a Carter-like dilemmaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said: \u201cDon\u2019t they think to themselves that if their threats had any effect, they wouldn\u2019t have reached the desperation they face today? We don\u2019t take the Americans\u2019 threats into account at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the delegation felt compelled to walk out in protest partly because there is domestic political pressure on the negotiators to show they distrust the Trump negotiating team.<\/p>\n

Iran said it had remounted its blockade in the strait in protest at the continued Israeli<\/a> attacks in Lebanon<\/a> and said Trump was allowing Israel to breach the memorandum of understanding signed by the US president and his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, last week.<\/p>\n

The memorandum clearly calls for a ceasefire on all fronts, but Israel killed more than 30 people in attacks on Saturday in central and southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble,\u201d Trump wrote on social media. \u201cIf they don\u2019t, we\u2019ll hit Iran very hard again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA family gathers near their destroyed home in Kfar Roummane, Lebanon, on Sunday. Photograph: David Guttenfelder\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

In a 20-minute phone call with Fox News, which revealed his sensitivity to the criticism being directed at him by Republicans and Democrats alike, he said: \u201cWe may take over the strait, if we have to. If they don\u2019t make a deal, we\u2019ll collect tolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Referring to the strait, he appeared to threaten to kidnap the Iranian negotiators, saying: \u201cYou close it and you won\u2019t have a country. You won\u2019t even make it back to your f**king country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president\u2019s threat led to a formal protest by the Iranians to the mediators and a demand that what they described as his \u201cbullying\u201d was brought under control.<\/p>\n

At the talks in Switzerland, Vance played down the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying \u200bprogress had been made towards ending hostilities there. \u201cThese things are always a little bit messy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Adopting a contrastingly emollient tone to Trump, he added: \u201cWhat the president has asked us to do, is turn over a new leaf, to transform our relationship with the people of Iran and to extend an outstretched hand, that says to the people of Iran that if your leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions for the long term, then the United States is ready to fundamentally transform our relationship with that country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question before us now is how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf?\u201d<\/p>\n

The US energy secretary Chris Wright said the renewed Iranian blockade was having no effect and claimed that 67 ships had transited the waterway on Saturday, on top of 55 ships on Friday.<\/p>\n

The practical impact of the Iranian decision to keep the strait closed is yet to be tested, but Trump said last week that the world was four weeks from running out of sufficient refined oil and said there would have been a worldwide recession if he had not agreed to the strait\u2019s reopening by lifting the US blockade on Iranian oil ports.<\/p>\n

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a close confidant of Trump, said: \u201cI spent 4\u00bd with president Trump on Friday. Here\u2019s what I think will happen next. If this deal fails, president Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force … We\u2019ll charge a fee for all those who go through to pay for the operation … if Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States we\u2019ll obliterate them.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Maureen Dowd: Donald Trump, the Creature from the Green LagoonOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump is under fierce attack from US supporters of Israel who are angry at the personal attacks mounted on the Israeli prime ministerBinyamin Netanyahu<\/a> by Trump and Vance.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a memorial service for his late brother, Yonatan, Netanyahu said Israel would \u201cremain in the security buffer zone in southern Lebanon for as long as necessary\u201d, a reference to an area up to 9km from the border that Israel has occupied. Netanyahu also reiterated his claim that he \u201cwill not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons\u201d.<\/p>\n

Iran says the talks must focus on the Lebanon ceasefire, the terms for the reopening of the strait, and the lifting of US sanctions on Iranian oil exports, alongside the unfreezing of Iranian assets held abroad. <\/p>\n

Ghalibaf, has brought with him the chief executive of the National Iranian Oil company, and the head of Iran\u2019s central bank, suggesting that the technicalities of oil sanctions being lifted and the channels through which frozen money can be directed to Iran are at the forefront of Iranian thinking.<\/p>\n

The Iranian delegation refused to appear on camera alongside the US delegation led by Vance, Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the US special envoy Steve Witkoff. But the two delegations were briefly filmed in the same room, and the format of the afternoon talks involved Iran, the US, Pakistan and Qatar in a quadrilateral format. Qatar is deeply entrenched as the joint mediator alongside Pakistan.<\/p>\n

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, was also in Switzerland, but the Iranian delegation want to postpone talks on the future inspections of its nuclear sites until after the sanctions disputes are resolved.<\/p>\n

The aim is to resolve the nuclear issues, including the intrusiveness and frequency of International Atomic Energy Agency inspections within 60 days, but the period can be extended by mutual agreement. \u2013 The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian negotiators have suspended high-stakes talks with the US in Switzerland in protest at a stream of threats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[6222,9,10,356,13,14,6,18929,71,12175,11,12,14407,15,16,5,9951,2214,2120,168834,2423,7,8,384,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-547323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-binyamin-netanyahu","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-donald-trump","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-jd-vance","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-lebanon","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-oil","tag-pakistan","tag-qatar","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-switzerland","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116790355170677101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}