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.