Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Jun 21, 2026
Mideast Live Updates: New Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Set to Start in Switzerland
Vice President JD Vance was expected to talk with Iranian negotiators. But the conflict in Lebanon threatens efforts to reach a broader peace and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
Updated
June 21, 2026, 7:12 a.m. ET33 minutes ago
Aurelien Breeden and Yan Zhuang
Here’s the latest
Diplomats huddled at a lakeside resort in Switzerland on Sunday before a new round of U.S.-Iranian talks, even as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the status of the Strait of Hormuz loomed over efforts to reach a broader peace deal.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, conferred with his Swiss counterpart, and the Iranian delegation was also scheduled to meet Pakistani and Qatari officials, who have acted as mediators. The American delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, met with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan.
The flurry of bilateral discussions came ahead of what was expected to be the centerpiece of the talks, at the Swiss resort at Bürgenstock: a four-way meeting between delegations from the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar.
One of the most urgent issues is the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia. That conflict flared up on Saturday despite a new cease-fire, but it appeared to ease on Sunday after the Israeli government directed the military to restrict itself to defensive actions.
Another key issue is the passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. An initial U.S.-Iran agreement, signed last week, established a 60-day cease-fire during which the United States promised to end its blockade of Iranian ports, and Iran promised to let shipping flow freely through the strait, a vital waterway for transporting oil and gas.
But the status of the strait was thrown into confusion on Saturday after Iran claimed it was closing the waterway over the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military said that marine traffic in the strait continued to flow and asserted that Iran “does not control” the strait.
The most difficult issue in the U.S.-Iran negotiations — what to do about Iran’s nuclear program and stockpile of uranium — has been left for the next round of talks. So far, Iran has only reiterated its longstanding promise not to develop nuclear weapons, and promised at a minimum to dilute its stockpile of near-bomb grade uranium as part of a final deal.
Before Mr. Vance boarded his plane, he told reporters that he hoped to make progress on the “nuclear issue” and the “Lebanon cease-fire issue.”
Here’s what else we are covering:
Nuclear program: Iran will “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium, and the United States “will ultimately have to accept this,” President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said at a conference in Tehran on Sunday, state-controlled Iranian media reported.
Lebanon strikes: There were no reports of Israeli attacks on Lebanon or Hezbollah strikes on Israelis by midday local time on Sunday. Still, it was not clear whether the new Israeli directive announced late Saturday would resolve the friction that led to deadly clashes on Friday and Saturday and threatened to derail the preliminary U.S.-Iran deal.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
June 21, 2026, 7:34 a.m. ET11 minutes ago
Sanam Mahoozi
A trilateral meeting between Iran, the United States and Qatar is taking place now in Switzerland, Iranian state media reported, with the focus on Iran’s frozen assets and achieving a comprehensive cease-fire in Lebanon. The White House has not publicly confirmed that the meeting is taking place.
June 21, 2026, 7:19 a.m. ET26 minutes ago
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel directs its military to limit its actions in Lebanon, though tensions persist.
The fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah appeared to ease on Sunday, a day after the Israeli government directed the military to restrict itself to defensive actions only in Lebanon.
There were no reports of Israeli attacks on Lebanon or Hezbollah strikes on Israelis by midday. Still, it was not clear whether the new directive, announced late on Saturday, would resolve the friction that led to deadly clashes on Friday and Saturday and threatened to derail a preliminary U.S.-Iran peace deal.
Cease-fires in Lebanon have been declared, broken and reinstated numerous times in recent weeks, but the fighting has persisted amid disagreements over what constitutes defensive actions by Israeli forces.
“There has never been, and there is no, restriction on IDF soldiers in Lebanon to act to eliminate threats,” Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Sunday, referring to the Israeli military.
The clashes centered around the area of Tebnit and nearby Ali al-Taher, a strategic ridgeline overlooking the large city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military says the area serves as a major stronghold for Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, and contains substantial underground infrastructure used by the group.
A statement from Israel’s military late on Saturday said Israeli forces should operate only within the country’s self-declared “security zone,” a stretch of territory its troops control in southern Lebanon that extends about six miles north of the Israeli border.
The Israeli military recently issued an updated map of the zone that placed Tebnit and Ali al-Taher just within the area under Israeli control. The ridgeline has emerged as a dangerous flashpoint.
Early on Friday, four Israeli soldiers, including a battalion commander, were killed in a tank that the military says was targeted by Hezbollah. A fifth soldier was killed in the area on Saturday, setting off waves of Israeli retaliatory strikes. The military said Hezbollah had launched more than 50 rockets targeting its soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had attacked Israeli forces advancing toward Ali al-Taher.
With both sides accusing one another of having violated a previous truce, Hezbollah said that while the group remained “committed” to the agreement, it would “not tolerate any attempt by the enemy to seize additional territory or expand its occupation.”
The Israeli government said on Saturday that the military struck 300 targets on Friday and Saturday in response to Hezbollah’s latest attacks and killed approximately 100 members of the group.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported casualties in nearly two dozen towns and President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of targeting “innocent civilians.”
The hostilities in Lebanon have threatened multiple times to upend progress toward a U.S.-Iran framework peace agreement.
On Saturday afternoon, the Iranian military announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for oil, in response to Israel’s actions in Lebanon. The U.S. military said that marine traffic in the strait continued to flow and asserted that Iran “does not control” the strait. The prolonged interruption of shipping in the waterway since the war began has sent energy prices soaring and roiled global markets.
Soon after the Iranian announcement, and with retaliation for Hezbollah’s strikes over, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Mr. Katz, directed the military to cease its fire, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal decision-making.
The Israeli military then issued a statement late on Saturday saying it had received “updated directives” from the country’s political leaders and would not be “conducting proactive strikes” in Lebanon.
But it reserved the right to respond if Hezbollah did not abide by the cease-fire and targeted Israeli troops or civilians.
The statement also said the military was continuing to operate in the area of Tebnit “to remove immediate threats,” including Hezbollah militants and infrastructure, both above and below ground.
June 21, 2026, 6:03 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Reporting from Lausanne, Switzerland
The American delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, has greeted the Pakistani delegation, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and their meeting has begun, according to the White House pool report. The report said Vance ignored a reporter’s question about whether he had a message for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about military operations in Lebanon, which are looming as an immediate hurdle to the negotiations with Iran.
June 21, 2026, 5:56 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Iran nuclear talks expected to hinge on these four questions.
The next round of U.S.-Iran negotiations will seek to resolve perhaps the thorniest issue between the two sides: What should happen to Iran’s nuclear program?
President Trump has repeatedly said that the primary motivation for starting war with Iran was to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. For years, Iran has been amassing near-bomb-grade uranium, which the United States and Israel fear could be developed into a weapon.
The site where most of that material is believed to be stored was believed to be heavily damaged in U.S.-Israeli attacks last year. But without independent access to the area, the fate of the stockpile remains unclear.
For more than 50 years, Tehran has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. But the United States is demanding assurances that Iran cannot secretly develop a weapon.
Here are four key areas the talks are likely to focus on:
Uranium Enrichment
The process of enriching uranium transforms it from fuel that can be used for civilian purposes, like energy production, into a crucial component of a nuclear weapon.
To prevent that from happening, the United States is demanding that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment for at least 20 years. The Iranians have countered with offers of a 10-year halt.
In a phone call with The New York Times on June 14, Mr. Trump hinted that he might settle for a 15-year suspension, but that said he didn’t want to negotiate via the news media. In the same call, he also suggested that Iran be limited to enriching at low levels “forever.”
Looming over the new talks is the deal struck by President Barack Obama in 2015 that negotiated a 15-year halt. Mr. Trump tore up that deal in his first term.
Vice President JD Vance, who is leading the American negotiation, stated on Thursday that the U.S. was seeking a complete a moratorium on all uranium enrichment by Iran over the suspension period.
“The Obama deal allowed the Iranians to enrich uranium. This deal will not,” Mr. Vance told reporters.
Mr. Obama’s deal limited enrichment to 3.67 percent, enough for research and medicine. Nuclear weapons typically require about 90 percent enrichment.
Current Stockpile
After Mr. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018, Iran steadily increased its stockpile of near-bomb-grade material until it had enough to build at least 10 bombs. As of June 2025, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, believed that Iran had about 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, in addition to roughly 11 tons of uranium enriched to other levels.
The United States struck three key Iranian nuclear sites last year, including a complex outside Isfahan, where the U.N. agency said most of the near-bomb-grade material was stored. But with international inspectors barred from the site, the status of the enriched uranium is uncertain.
U.S. officials are insisting that Iran disposes of its stockpiles completely. According to two American officials, the United States is offering to work with the U.N. watchdog to dilute, or “downblend,” it to safe levels.
Another option would be for Iran to transfer the stockpile to another country, as it did with 98 percent of the cache under the 2015 deal. Iran has not said publicly whether it would be willing to give up its entire stockpile.
Nuclear Sites
The United States has insisted that Iran dismantle its two enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordo, as well as its uranium storage tunnels at Isfahan. It’s possible that Iran also has additional nuclear sites that the world doesn’t know about.
Tehran has balked, insisting that that would amount to surrendering its “right to enrich.” It has argued that at least one site should remain, though that might prove difficult for U.S. negotiators to stomach.
Under the Obama deal, Iran was permitted to keep facilities, as long as they were repurposed for civilian use. Critics of that deal say it meant that Iran was able to quietly revive nuclear enrichment after the 2015 deal collapsed.
Access for Inspectors
International inspectors haven’t had any visibility into Iranian nuclear sites since the U.S.-Israeli attacks last year prompted Tehran to block the U.N. agency’s access.
The Trump administration wants international inspectors to be able to conduct “snap” visits at any time and at any site in Iran. Rafael M. Grossi, the head of the U.N. watchdog, said on Thursday that both Iran and the United States wanted his agency to have a role in verifying their agreement.
Prospects for an Agreement
Resolving all of these questions within the 60-day negotiating timeline set out by the initial U.S.-Iran deal will be a tall order, said Darya Dolzikova, an expert in nuclear weaponry at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based research group. The 60-day window is extendable by mutual consent, and Mr. Trump said this past week that it was not a “hard” deadline.
For one thing, she said, the two sides would need to establish the current status of Iran’s nuclear program and stockpile, an extensive exercise.
“If you’re going to start negotiating away parts of Iran’s program and potentially even accepting certain elements of it,” Ms. Dolzikova said, “then we need to have a sense of what they have now.”
“I don’t want to say it’s not possible,” she said, “but these are very complex issues, and 60 days is not a lot of time.”
June 21, 2026, 5:34 a.m. ET2 hours ago
A glamorous Swiss getaway will be the setting of the U.S.-Iran negotiations.
Officials from Iran and the United States are expected to begin the next phase of talks to end the war in the Middle East on Sunday at a remote, high-altitude resort in Switzerland beloved by Hollywood stars of yore.
Bürgenstock is a mountain and home to the Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne, overlooking the waters below. The resort has hosted some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people over nearly 150 years.
The property had traded hands several times before Katara Hospitality, a global hotel developer owned by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, acquired it in 2007 and undertook an almost decade-long redevelopment.
“Switzerland provides a discreet and reliable setting to facilitate talks at Bürgenstock on the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran,” the Swiss foreign ministry said in a post on its website on Sunday, referring to an initial agreement signed last week.
The mountain is at an elevation of nearly 3,700 feet. The resort, at nearly 3,000 feet, holds hotels, residences, a spa, an alpine golf course, tennis courts, a museum, an infinity pool with a lake view, restaurants — including one specializing in Persian food — and more, across nearly 150 acres of forest.
The Grand Hotel Bürgenstock first opened in 1873. It was developed by the Swiss entrepreneurs Franz Josef Bucher and Josef Durrer. They bought the mountain property, leveled out a summit ridge, and built a getaway with a stunning view of Lake Lucerne and the Alps.
The mountaintop hotel, though remote and hard to reach, was an immediate draw. The entrepreneurs soon expanded, building more hotels and a funicular railway, etching out a cliff path and establishing a lift for viewing vistas that now whisks visitors 500 feet up in about a minute.
To get to the resort, visitors take a boat across the lake, misty with “sea smoke” created by the mountain ridge hovering above the water, to Switzerland’s oldest electrically operated funicular railway.
Its allure has long endured, with Hollywood stars of the mid-20th century often making the trek.
The actress Audrey Hepburn married the actor and director Mel Ferrer in the mountain chapel at the resort in 1954. Ms. Hepburn and the actress Sophia Loren, who has said she has spent her life in hotels, both had residences there and reportedly enjoyed hanging out at the golf club. In 1964, the resort was a setting in the James Bond movie “Goldfinger.”
The resort has also been an escape for world leaders over the years, including former President Jimmy Carter; Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, former prime ministers of India; David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, former Israeli prime ministers; and Konrad Adenauer, former chancellor of Germany.
This will not be the first time that the resort has hosted diplomatic talks.
Among the most recent such gatherings were the 2024 negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. The conference brought together about 1,000 people, including 57 heads of state.
It was the largest diplomatic event in Switzerland’s history, according to resort representatives, and the Swiss authorities chose the location.
June 21, 2026, 5:22 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Sanam Mahoozi
The upcoming negotiations between Iran and the United States are a good platform for Iran to resolve its economic problems, President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said at a conference in Tehran today, state-controlled Iranian media reported. “The prospect of continuing to face inflation rates above 50 or 60 percent in the coming years is unacceptable to me,” he said.
June 21, 2026, 5:21 a.m. ET2 hours ago
Iran’s primary condition ahead of talks with the United States today is “an end to the war on all fronts,” Iranian state media reported, referring to what it said was a lack of progress toward that objective in Lebanon.
June 21, 2026, 5:21 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Leo Sands
An issue looming over negotiations is the Strait of Hormuz, which the United States and Iran each committed to reopening last week. But on Sunday morning, its status was unclear. On Saturday, Iran’s military stated that it was again closing the waterway, arguing that fighting in Lebanon amounted to a breach of the preliminary deal. But the U.S. military later said that the waterway was open. As of Sunday morning, the U.K. maritime authority which monitors the strait had not updated its guidance since the previous day, when it advised that the strait’s southern route was navigable.
June 21, 2026, 5:20 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Sanam Mahoozi
Iran’s delegation in Switzerland has two meetings scheduled today, Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, told Iranian state news agency IRNA. Iranian officials will hold meetings with Pakistani and Qatari delegations, which are mediating the process, in the morning, he said. Then they will meet in the afternoon with the U.S. delegation, with Pakistani and Qatari officials attending as well, he said.
June 21, 2026, 5:13 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Sanam Mahoozi
Iran will “never back down” from its right to enrich uranium, and the United States “will ultimately have to accept this,” President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said at a conference in Tehran today, state-controlled Iranian media reported.
June 21, 2026, 4:10 a.m. ET4 hours ago
The American negotiating team led by Vice President JD Vance, and its Iranian counterpart led by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, have arrived at the lakeside resort of Bürgenstock alongside mediators from Pakistan and Qatar, Switzerland’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. “Talks between the parties are set to begin during the course of the morning,” it said.
June 21, 2026, 2:54 a.m. ET5 hours ago
The Pakistani delegation has arrived in Switzerland, the Swiss foreign ministry said on social media. Pakistan, an intermediary in the U.S.-Iran negotiations, said earlier that its delegation included Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the country’s army chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir.
June 21, 2026, 2:50 a.m. ET5 hours ago
The Swiss Air Force base where Vice President JD Vance landed early Sunday is roughly a half-hour drive from the mountain resort near Lake Lucerne where the next phase of peace talks is expected to begin later today. The Iranian negotiators will have a longer drive. Iranian state media reported that they landed at Zurich International Airport, Switzerland’s largest city. That is about an hour by car from the resort.
June 21, 2026, 12:39 a.m. ET7 hours ago
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, arrived at Emmen Air Base in Switzerland shortly before 6 a.m. local time on Sunday, ahead of peace talks with Iranian officials that are expected to begin later today. Before departing from the United States, Mr. Vance told reporters that he would only attend negotiations for a day or two, and that he hoped progress would be made on Iran’s nuclear program and the cease-fire in Lebanon.