The Vice President of the United States is flying to Islamabad this week to sit across the table from Iran’s Parliament Speaker and Foreign Minister in the highest-level face-to-face meeting between America and Iran since 1979. We haven’t had a sit-down like this since the hostage crisis, when Jimmy Carter was stress-eating peanuts in the Oval Office and our diplomats were blindfolded in Tehran. And this time, we’re not showing up to beg.
But sure, let’s hear more from CNN about how Trump’s foreign policy is “reckless” and “unhinged.” The man just collapsed Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb, took out over 100 of the world’s worst terrorists on the planet, and showed the world the American military is still the fiercest and most devastating armed force in the world, and now he’s sending his Vice President to close the deal — flanked by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the two guys who helped broker the Abraham Accords. If this is reckless, somebody get me more of it.
Here’s what we know. Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner are heading to the Serena Hotel in Islamabad for Saturday morning talks. Pakistan is hosting because — and I genuinely love this — nobody else volunteered. NATO wouldn’t help us fight, and now they won’t even help us negotiate. Pakistan stepped up, cleared the hotel of every guest, compensated them for the inconvenience, and locked down the capital like it’s hosting the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, France and Germany are issuing “statements of concern” from the comfort of their taxpayer-funded bistros.
The Iranian delegation is being led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which is Iran’s way of saying they’re taking this seriously without admitting they got their clocks cleaned. These are the same people who closed the Strait of Hormuz, watched their military infrastructure get turned into parking lots, used children as human shields at power plants, and then asked for a ceasefire. But they’re the serious negotiators.
Now, Iran showed up to this thing with a 10-point wish list that reads like it was written by a college freshman in a Model UN club. They want oversight of the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway they just blockaded. They want us to withdraw all combat forces from the Middle East — while they’re still funding Hezbollah, Hamas, and every militia with a grudge and a rocket launcher. They want us to stop military operations against their “allied armed groups,” which is a polite way of saying the terrorist organizations they’ve been arming for decades. It’s the diplomatic equivalent of a guy who just lost a bar fight asking the bouncer to hold his jacket while he goes back in.
The White House, to their credit, is not playing games. Karoline Leavitt already made it clear that Iran surrendering its enriched uranium stockpile is non-negotiable. Not a talking point. Not a starting position. Non-negotiable. And the Strait of Hormuz has to be open — fully, immediately, without limitations, and without tolls. Iran tried to reopen it for about five minutes on Tuesday before slamming it shut again because Israel bombed some Hezbollah positions in Lebanon and Iran got its feelings hurt. That’s the level of seriousness we’re dealing with on their side.
And speaking of Lebanon — that’s the landmine in the middle of these negotiations. Iran claims Lebanon was included in the ceasefire. Israel says it wasn’t. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif seems to think it was. VP Vance says everyone knows it wasn’t. What we do know is that Israel launched a fresh wave of strikes into Lebanon the moment the ceasefire was announced, and Iran is using that as an excuse to drag its feet on opening Hormuz. It’s a mess, but it’s the kind of mess that Vance was born to untangle — the guy wrote a bestselling memoir about surviving chaos before he was 35.
What makes this moment different from every failed Iran negotiation in the last four decades is leverage. Obama gave Iran $150 billion and a path to nuclear weapons in exchange for a pinky promise. Biden couldn’t even get them to return our phone calls. Trump just destroyed their military capacity, tanked their economy, and sent the Vice President to offer them one chance to come in from the cold. That’s not diplomacy by begging. That’s diplomacy by winning first.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, 85 Democrats have filed impeachment papers against the President who just ended a shooting war and is now closing the peace. Let that sink in. The man is literally sending his VP to negotiate the most significant Middle East peace deal since Camp David, and the Democratic caucus is trying to remove him from office because he used strong language while telling Iran to open a shipping lane. These people would impeach Churchill for the “fight them on the beaches” speech.
The markets already know what’s coming. The S&P jumped 2.5%. The Dow surged nearly 3%. Oil dropped from north of $110 to $94 in a single session. South Korea’s market had its best day in a year. Germany’s DAX posted gains not seen since 2022. The world is betting that Trump’s team is going to walk into Islamabad and walk out with a deal. And for once, the world might be right.
So here’s where we are. JD Vance — the kid from Middletown, Ohio who grew up in a broken home, served in Iraq, went to Yale Law, wrote a book that Hollywood turned into a movie, and became Vice President at 41 — is about to sit across from the representatives of a theocratic regime that’s been chanting “Death to America” since before he was born. He’s flanked by the architect of the Abraham Accords and the dealmaker who got Sudan, Bahrain, and the UAE to recognize Israel. And behind all of them is a President who just proved, in the most direct way possible, that America doesn’t bluff anymore.
Iran can take the deal or leave it. But after what happened to their military last week, I’d recommend taking it.
