Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Pushes Back After Trump Announces New Round of Talks

 

Iran War Live Updates: Tehran Pushes Back After Trump Announces New Round of Talks

President Trump said U.S. negotiators would head to talks mediated by Pakistan, but Iranian state media said no meeting had been confirmed. The two-week cease-fire is set to expire this week.

 

Updated

April 19, 2026, 2:06 p.m. ET38 minutes ago

Tyler Pager Shirin Hakim and Sanam Mahoozi

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/19/world/iran-us-war-trump-hormuz

 

Here’s the latest.

Just days before a two-week cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran was set to expire, President Trump and Iranian officials disagreed on Sunday over whether top officials would meet this week in Pakistan for a second round of negotiations to end the war.

 

Hours after Mr. Trump said American officials would attend talks in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to any such meeting.

 

A White House official said Vice President JD Vance was expected to lead a U.S. delegation, accompanied by the top Trump aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner The negotiations, should they take place, would be the second meeting of high-level officials since a two-week cease-fire went into effect on April 8.

 

The conflicting accounts about the state of the negotiations came as the economically vital Strait of Hormuz remained all but closed, a move Mr. Trump characterized in a social media post on Sunday as a “total violation of our cease-fire.”

 

Iran said it had effectively closed the strait, a waterway crucial to the transit of global energy supplies, in defiance of one of Mr. Trump’s conditions for the temporary truce between the United States, Israel and Iran.

 

Mr. Trump’s announcement of U.S. participation in the talks came with a renewed threat to attack Iran’s civilian infrastructure if the strait is not reopened and an extension of the cease-fire is not reached.

 

“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.”

 

The last round of negotiations, led last weekend by Mr. Vance in Islamabad, ended without a breakthrough. The meeting had been the highest-level encounter between Iranian and American leaders in decades.

 

In recent days, Mr. Trump had repeatedly said Iran had assented to nearly all of his demands on the country’s nuclear program. Iranian leaders vehemently denied that claim, dampening hopes for an immediate agreement.

 

Here’s what else we are covering:

 

Strait of Hormuz: Iranian forces were maintaining their tight grip on the strait, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels. Iran declared the strait open to commercial ships on Friday, as long as they followed a designated route. But less than a day later Iranian officials said the strait would stay closed in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s blockade of Iran’s ports. Even if the strait opened fully, it would take weeks for oil and gas prices to recover.

 

Pakistan: Pakistan appeared to be readying for a fresh round of talks between the U.S. and Iran, an indication that the talks were likely to go forward even as the two sides sent conflicting public messages. Islamabad, the capital, went on a security lockdown on Sunday night and officials said they would deploy 10,000 extra security forces in the city.

 

Lebanon: Thousands of displaced Lebanese families were making their way back home to Lebanon’s south on Sunday soon after a 10-day cease-fire went into effect. The head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said this weekend that the group was willing to cooperate with the Lebanese authorities to end the war with Israel and laid out a series of conditions for a lasting truce.