President Donald Trump canceled a planned trip by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, to Pakistan on Saturday, just a day after the trip was touted as a potential restart for fragile peace talks with Iran.
“I just cancelled the trip of my representatives going is [to] Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the Iranians,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work! Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”
The quick reversal is the latest signal of Trump’s impatience with negotiations that aren’t going as quickly as he’d hope.
In a separate statement provided by the White House, Trump said the U.S. has “all the cards.”
“I’ve told my people a little while ago they were getting ready to leave, and I said, ‘Nope, you’re not making an 18-hour flight to go there,’” he said. “We have all the cards. They can call us anytime they want, but you’re not going to be making any more 18 hour flights to sit around talking about nothing.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified on Friday that it was the Iranians who initiated these rounds of negotiations, contrary to the regime’s claims that they had no intention of engaging in trilateral talks.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and his delegation flew out of Islamabad Saturday following their talks with Pakistani leaders.
While speaking to reporters on Saturday afternoon before boarding Air Force One in Florida, Trump said that Iran presented him with a “paper that should have been better.” He added that within 10 minutes of him canceling the trip, Tehran sent “a new paper that was much better.”
