Iran War Live Updates: Witkoff and Kushner to Travel to Pakistan for Talks on Iran

What We’re Covering Today

• Negotiations: Jared Kushner, a son-in-law of President Trump’s, and Steve Witkoff, a special envoy, are traveling to Pakistan on Saturday for discussions on the war in Iran. Read more ›

• Lebanon: The fragile truce in Lebanon was extended after talks in Washington this week but has since come under threat as both Israel and Hezbollah have traded attacks. Read more ›

• Strait of Hormuz: Both the United States and Iran are blocking the transit of ships through the waterway, which remains a critical issue in peace talks. Read more ›

Negotiations

April 25, 2026, 7:58 a.m. ET57 minutes ago

Leily Nikounazar

Iran’s military threatened on Saturday to retaliate over the U.S. military’s blockade of Iranian ports. “If the aggressive U.S. military continues its blockade, banditry, and piracy in the region, it should be certain that it will face a response from Iran’s powerful armed forces,” the military said in a statement carried by Iranian state media. President Trump ordered the blockade in response to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global energy supplies.

The measure appears to have had little effect in forcing Iran to accept American conditions for a diplomatic agreement to end the war. U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to gather in Pakistan on Saturday for further talks, although it was unclear whether they would meet directly or exchange messages through Pakistani mediators.

April 25, 2026, 2:45 a.m. ET6 hours ago

Elian Peltier

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, met with Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, in Islamabad on Saturday morning, according to Pakistani officials and the Iranian embassy in Pakistan. Araghchi arrived in Pakistan on Friday.

From the U.S. side, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are traveling to the Pakistani capital today, but it is not clear if they will meet any Iranian officials. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said on Friday that no U.S.-Iran meeting was planned and that Iran would convey its position through Pakistani officials.

April 24, 2026, 8:00 p.m. ETApril 24, 2026

Michael Crowley

Reporting from Washington

Marco Rubio’s absence from Iran talks highlights his stay-at-home role

When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago, his point man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart on at least 18 different days, often several times per day.

High-level nuclear diplomacy was a natural role for the top U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state traditionally take the lead on the country’s biggest diplomatic tasks, from arms control treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

But as President Trump prepares to send a delegation to the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will remain where he often does: at home.

Mr. Rubio did not attend the last U.S. meeting with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he join several meetings held over the past year in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has also been absent from U.S. delegations abroad working to settle the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite a long period of crisis and war in the region, he has not visited the Middle East since a brief stop in Israel last October.

In recent months, Mr. Rubio — consumed with his second role, as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — has not traveled much at all.

During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 foreign trips from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. So far this year, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign cities, including a stop in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Mr. Trump has outsourced much of his diplomacy to others, including his friend Steve Witkoff, a wealthy associate from the world of Manhattan real estate, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have spearheaded diplomacy with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Iran, whose delegation they will meet for the second time this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.

Mr. Rubio’s distance from the trenches of diplomacy reflects his dual role on Mr. Trump’s national security team. For the past year, he has served as the White House national security adviser even while leading the State Department — the first person to do so since Henry A. Kissinger in the mid-1970s.

The secretary of state runs the State Department, overseeing U.S. diplomats and embassies worldwide, as well as Washington-based policymakers. Working from the White House, the national security adviser coordinates departments and agencies, including the State Department, to develop policy advice for the president.

The twin roles reflect Mr. Rubio’s influence with Mr. Trump, and offer him a way to maintain it. For Mr. Rubio, less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.

As Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner and Vice President JD Vance met with Iranian officials in Pakistan earlier this month, Mr. Rubio was at Mr. Trump’s side at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, noted Emma Ashford, an analyst of U.S. diplomacy at the nonpartisan Stimson Center in Washington. “Rubio clearly prefers to stay close to Trump,” Ms. Ashford said.

Mr. Rubio accepted the national security adviser job on an acting basis last May after Mr. Trump reassigned the job’s previous occupant, Michael Waltz. But officials say that Mr. Rubio is expected to keep it indefinitely.

That arrangement is not inherently bad, Ms. Ashford added. And she noted that previous presidents had entrusted major diplomatic tasks to people other than the secretary of state. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delegated his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to handle diplomacy with Russia and cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, for instance.

But she echoed the complaints by many current and former diplomats that Mr. Rubio seems less like someone performing both jobs than a national security adviser who sometimes shows up at the State Department. “I do think it’s to the detriment of the whole department of State and to America’s ability to conduct diplomacy in general that we effectively have the secretary of state position sitting vacant,” she said.

Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, contested such claims. “Anyone trying to paint Secretary Rubio’s close coordination with the White House and other agencies as a negative could not be more wrong,” he said. “We now have an N.S.C. and State Department that are totally in sync, a goal that has eluded past administrations for decades.”

Mr. Rubio divides his time between the State Department and the White House, often spending time at both in the same day. In an interview with Politico last June, Mr. Rubio said he visited the State Department “almost every day.”

While there, he often meets with visiting dignitaries before returning to the White House. Last week, Mr. Rubio presided over a meeting at the State Department between Lebanese and Israeli officials that set the stage for a cease-fire in Lebanon.

His twin jobs “really do overlap in many cases,” he said. “In many cases you end up being in the same meetings or in the same places; there’s just one less person in there, if you think about it,” Mr. Rubio added. “A lot of people would come to Washington, for example, for meetings, and they’d want to meet with the national security adviser and then meet with me as secretary of state. Now they can do both in one meeting.”

Asked about his travel schedule during a news conference last December, Mr. Rubio said he had less reason to travel abroad because “we have a lot of leaders constantly coming here” to visit Mr. Trump at the White House. Mr. Rubio also joins Mr. Trump’s foreign trips in his capacity as national security adviser.

Many national security veterans call the arrangement unwise, saying that both jobs are extremely demanding and incompatible with one another.

It was not easy even for Mr. Kissinger, who had firmly established himself over more than four years as national security adviser before convincing President Richard M. Nixon to let him take on an additional role as secretary of state in 1973. (In a reversal of Mr. Rubio’s approach, Mr. Kissinger was in constant motion, including a round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy that kept him on the road for 33 straight days.)

“In general, it’s a mistake to combine those roles,” said Matthew Waxman, who held senior roles at the National Security Council, State Department and the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.

“That said, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that a dual-hatted Rubio is so offscreen right now,” Mr. Waxman added. “Especially while so much attention is focused on high-wire diplomacy with Iran, someone needs to manage foreign policy around the rest of the world.”

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April 24, 2026, 5:16 p.m. ETApril 24, 2026

Luke BroadwaterFarnaz Fassihi and Euan Ward

Luke Broadwater reported from Washington, and Euan Ward from Beirut, Lebanon.

The U.S. is sending Kushner and Witkoff to Pakistan for talks on Iran

The United States and Iran on Friday were taking steps to resume peace talks, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships and ports would continue for “as long as it takes” to get Tehran to agree to a deal.

Steve Witkoff, a U.S. special envoy, and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, planned to travel to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Saturday for negotiations, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.

“Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out,” Ms. Leavitt told reporters outside the White House. “We hope progress will be made, and we hope that positive developments will come from this meeting.”

Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, who has been leading the talks with the Iranians, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will be waiting here in the United States for updates,” Ms. Leavitt added.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived in Islamabad on Friday, Iranian state media reported. He was carrying a written response to a U.S. proposal for a peace deal, according to two senior Iranian officials familiar with his plans.

Earlier, the Iranian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said Mr. Araghchi had been expected to meet with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner this weekend. But later, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a post on X that no meeting was planned between Iran and the United States in Pakistan and that Iran would convey its position through Pakistani officials.

While Iran has publicly rejected peace talks during the U.S. naval blockade of its ports, the two Iranian officials said that Tehran has been exchanging messages through Pakistan and engaging in diplomacy to resume talks. The Trump administration has said the military cordon is aimed at crushing the Iranian economy and pressuring Tehran to make a deal.

Mr. Hegseth said on Friday that while the naval blockade would continue, the U.S. military remained poised to attack Iran again on Mr. Trump’s orders.

“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely at the negotiating table,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon.

Many sticking points remain, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium; and Tehran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen assets held abroad be released.

The United States and Iran agreed to a cease-fire more than two weeks ago. Still, tensions have remained high in and around the strait, a crucial conduit for Persian Gulf crude oil and natural gas. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he was extending the cease-fire indefinitely. But both Iran and the United States have continued to seize vessels they said have violated their restrictions on shipping in the waterway.

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department rolled out a blitz of new sanctions targeting 40 shipping firms and vessels it said were part of Iran’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. It also imposed sanctions on a China-based independent refinery, Hengli, which the Treasury identified as one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products.

The United States and Iran moved to resume talks as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia, intensified in Lebanon on Friday, straining a separate cease-fire that was also extended by the White House.

Mr. Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce in Lebanon on Thursday, after hosting Israeli and Lebanese diplomats at the White House. Hezbollah, which is not part of the negotiations, has signaled it intends to abide by the truce if Israel does the same.

Strikes between Israel and Hezbollah have plummeted since an initial cease-fire was announced last week. But both sides have continued to exchange fire, raising fears that the truce could collapse into an all-out war.

“Cease-fire? What cease-fire while drones are still hovering above us?” said Fatima al-Masri, 49, who was in the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Friday. She was visiting the grave of her husband, an emergency worker, who had been killed in the conflict.

“What cease-fire while we are still losing our men and our loved ones?” she said, adding, “We want this war to be over.”

The current conflict that began last month has killed about 2,500 people in Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said, as well as two civilians and 15 soldiers in Israel, officials said.

The fighting began last month, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in support of Iran, setting off a large-scale Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion of southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are still deployed in a broad section of the country’s south, which Israeli officials have said they plan to occupy indefinitely.

Israel appeared to escalate its operations on Friday, issuing evacuation warnings for the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before launching airstrikes hours later. The town lies beyond the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would control amid the cease-fire, suggesting that Israel’s strikes were widening.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Hezbollah had launched rockets from the town a day earlier toward northern Israel. Hezbollah also said it had again fired drones at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Friday.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has pledged to continue demolishing border towns and villages amid the cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese remain displaced from the region, many with little idea if or when they can return.

During the talks at the White House on Thursday, Lebanon called for an end to those demolitions, according to a senior Lebanese official briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Hezbollah, for its part, expressed contempt for the state of the cease-fire on Friday, pointing to the continued Israeli military operations and reiterating its pledges to respond with force.

Mohamad Raad, Hezbollah’s leader in the Lebanese Parliament, said in a statement that the truce was “not a cease-fire at all,” and he urged the Lebanese government to withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel.

“The authorities should feel ashamed before their people,” Mr. Raad said, raising already simmering tensions between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, a group it does not control.

Israel’s strikes this week killed Amal Khalil, a reporter for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, and wounded another person in southern Lebanon, further rattling the tenuous truce.

The cease-fire agreement, released last week by the State Department, said that Israel would cease “offensive military operations” in Lebanon but “preserve its right to take all necessary measures in self-defense, at any time, against planned, imminent or ongoing attacks.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accused Hezbollah in a recorded video statement on Friday of moving to “sabotage” peace efforts between Israel and Lebanon, signaling the military had no intention to cease attacks against the group.

“We have maintained full freedom of action against any threat, including emerging threats,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We attacked yesterday, we attacked today. We are determined to restore security to the residents of the north.”

Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Alan Rappeport, Pranav Baskar, Sarah Chaayto, John Ismay, Michael Levenson and Abdi Latif Dahir.

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Lebanon

April 25, 2026, 7:27 a.m. ET1 hour ago

Abdi Latif Dahir

Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon

NEWS ANALYSIS

Lebanese ask, “What cease-fire?” as violence simmers in the south

President Trump’s announcement on Thursday of a three-week extension to the cease-fire in Lebanon preserved a much-needed pause in a war that has killed nearly 2,500 people, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and destroyed homes, bridges and basic infrastructure.

The cease-fire has proved fragile. Though the large-scale Israeli bombing of recent weeks has halted, hostilities have simmered in persistent, lower-level violence between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Neither Israel nor Lebanon, despite having engaged in rare diplomatic talks in Washington, has commented publicly on the cease-fire extension. Hezbollah, which was not directly involved in the U.S.-mediated talks, has signaled that it would reluctantly abide by the truce, so long as Israel does.

The continued violence and the grudging acceptance of terms, analysts say, suggest the deal falls short of a true cease-fire and is vulnerable to unraveling altogether.

“This is not so much a cease-fire as a limited de-escalation,” said David Wood, a senior Lebanon analyst at the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention research organization.

Under the terms of the truce, Israel has the right to act in self-defense, which it has cited as a justification for continuing to carry out strikes deep inside Lebanon. In recent days, its attacks have been concentrated in the south of Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold where the group has long exercised de facto control and enjoys broad support.

Israeli forces heavily bombarded the region during the war and now occupy a sizable stretch of territory there, where they are carrying out widespread demolitions.

Hezbollah, for its part, has continued attacks on Israeli forces and says it has downed Israeli reconnaissance drones. Senior political figures in Hezbollah have also dismissed the truce as meaningless, amid what they describe as Israel’s continuing escalation.

Lebanon’s cease-fire is deeply linked to broader tensions with Iran, Mr. Wood said, meaning that if the talks between Washington and Tehran were to break down, Lebanon could quickly become a flashpoint.

“One factor that makes the truce incredibly shaky is that it’s largely contingent on President Trump’s attention,” Mr. Wood said. “President Trump forced through this cease-fire largely because he didn’t want continued fighting in Lebanon to scupper negotiations with Iran.”

On Friday, Israel appeared to intensify its campaign, warning residents to evacuate the southern Lebanese town of Deir Aames before carrying out airstrikes. The town sits outside the six-mile-deep “forward defense line” that Israel said it would hold during the cease-fire, raising concerns that its operations were expanding.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired rockets from the area a day earlier toward northern Israel.

Ali Fayyad, a senior lawmaker affiliated with Hezbollah, said in a statement on Friday that the three-week extension of the cease-fire did not hold “any meaning” because of continued Israeli attacks in Lebanon’s south. The statement was the group’s first public response to President Trump’s announcement of the extension on Thursday.

Mr. Fayyad criticized the agreement for “obliging the Lebanese side to adhere to the cease-fire, while imposing no obligations, even minimal ones, on the Israeli side.”

For many of those still displaced from southern Lebanon, the cease-fire, they say, has brought little tangible relief. Kamil Mohamed Mansour fled the village of Tallouseh after the war began and now lives in a tent at a stadium in Beirut after losing his home, savings and farmland.

“What cease-fire are you talking about?” Mr. Mansour, 78, asked on a recent afternoon. “I have lost everything and am sitting here alone.”

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April 25, 2026, 8:48 a.m. ET8 minutes ago

Aaron Boxerman

At least four people were killed in Israeli strikes on a motorcyle and a truck in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry. In a statement carried by government-run Lebanese media, the health ministry said the strikes took place in the town of Yohmor in southern Lebanon.

While the United States has brokered a nominal cease-fire in Lebanon, the violence between Israel and Hezbollah has not come to a complete halt. Israel is continuing to attack in Lebanon in what it labels defensive actions. And Hezbollah is still shooting rockets at Israeli territory, though fewer of them than before.

April 25, 2026, 5:35 a.m. ET3 hours ago

Aaron Boxerman

Despite a U.S.-backed cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Israeli military still occupies swaths of southern Lebanon. On Saturday, Israel’s military reiterated its warning to hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese not to approach the Israeli-controlled areas, leaving many at a loss for when they might be able to return home.

Low-level fighting also continued to simmer. In a statement, the Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck rocket launchers outside the Israeli-occupied zone in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has also fired rockets at Israel multiple times since the truce went into effect earlier this month, setting off air-raid sirens in Israel.