Talks, threats and unrest: Trump sends team to Pakistan as defiant Iran stares him down –

TOI correspondent from Washington: A high-level US team returns to Pakistan on Monday for a second round of talks with Iran amid renewed threats from US President Donald Trump that he will destroy every bridge and every power plant if Tehran does not conclude a deal with Washington.Iran has not confirmed that its team will return to Pakistan for talks, suggesting that it will not do so until the US Navy lifts its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and agrees to negotiate other Iranian demands such as the lifting of sanctions, the unfreezing of its frozen assets, and a permanent end to the war. Despite Trump’s announcement of a US visit despite making dire threats, Iran was still checking with Pakistan, whose military ruler Asim Munir made an apparently fruitless three-day visit to Tehran last week, whether its red lines would be respected.In this regard, there was also confusion in Washington regarding the composition of the American team and its summary of the talks. Trump initially said Vice President J.D. Vance would not lead the team consisting of his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, ostensibly because of security concerns on the part of the Secret Service arising from the short-notice trip, but the White House later said Vance would go even though Iran has not confirmed her attendance.

Earlier, the US President struck an aggressive tone ahead of the talks with another harsh message to Iran on social media, scolding it for firing on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz in violation of the ceasefire agreement when he unloaded his cargo again in Tehran. “We are offering a very fair and reasonable deal, and I hope they accept it, because if they don’t, the United States will destroy every power station and every bridge in Iran.

no more mr. Nice guy!” Trump warned in a post, a watered-down version of his threat two weeks ago to end Iranian civilization, but many analysts still consider it a potential war crime.“They will collapse quickly, they will collapse easily, and if they do not accept the agreement, it will be my honor to do what needs to be done, and what other presidents of Iran should have done, over the past 47 years. It is time to end the Iranian killing machine!” Trump added. Meanwhile, Iranian President Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian said that it is the United States that announces who it will assassinate next and then describes the Iranians as terrorists. “Human rights are silent,” he said in an interview. “The United Nations is asleep. The international laws they like to cite are there for everyone except the people who are being bombed.”Trump is also being ridiculed at home for his clumsy approach to negotiations without proper preparatory work, with even US analysts saying his efforts to simply bulldoze Iran with threats and invective are unsuccessful.But according to the Wall Street Journal, citing senior administration officials, Trump told his aides that he wanted to appear as unstable and insulting as possible, believing that might bring the Iranians to the negotiating table.“It was a language the Iranians understood. But he was also concerned about the repercussions. “How are things going?” the report quoted one official as saying, referring to Trump’s Easter posts in which he called Iranian leaders “crazy bastards,” told them to “open the King’s Strait” and threatened to end their civilization, an approach that commentators around the world deemed “troubled.”The report also said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the country’s top diplomat who has been sidelined in talks with Iran — privately told others that it was language that might actually push the Iranians to negotiate. But far from dismayed, Tehran stared at the United States in danger of being further crushed, even as Trump repeatedly signaled that Iran’s leadership was divided and that his team was negotiating with a more moderate faction more inclined to strike a deal with Washington. At home, Trump faces mounting criticism for having led the United States into another remote quagmire, where, by his own admission, Washington has little interest.“They are helping us without knowing it, and they are the ones losing with the closed passage, $500 million a day! The United States is losing nothing. In fact, many ships are heading, right now, to the United States, Texas, Louisiana and Alaska to load, greetings from the IRGC, which always wants to be the ‘strong guy,’” Trump said in his Truth Social post on Sunday, undermining his campaign against Iran that is ostensibly focused on ensuring the country never comes close to a nuclear weapon.There is also a backlash in MAGA circles over rising gas prices at home, an issue that Trump has sought to ignore even as he boasts about U.S. energy self-sufficiency.Supporters of Vice President J.D. Vance are also unhappy about him being thrown under the bus for talks to defuse the war that has been against him from the beginning. Some commentators are surprised that Trump has tasked the Vice President with holding talks halfway around the world while constraining him with threats against Iran that reduce the odds of success, especially after the failure of the first round. “Bringing Vance back to Pakistan after 21 hours of failed talks is like restarting a microwave that has already caught fire,” one observer pointed out scathingly on the X program.