US President Donald Trump elaborated Sunday morning on his decision to cancel his envoys’ planned trip to Pakistan, also saying that Iranian authorities “can call” if they want to talk.
“By the time they get there, it’s hours and hours and hours of flying,” Trump told Fox News in a televised phone interview. “I said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore. We have all the cards.’ If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us.”
The US delegation was set to be led by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. CNN previously reported that Vice President JD Vance would have been on standby to travel to Islamabad in the event that the talks progressed.
That the US delegation was at least 17 hours away by plane, however, is something that would have posed a logistical hurdle, as the US negotiators would have been unlikely to land in Islamabad prior to the departure of the Iranian delegation – something Trump acknowledged during the interview with Fox.