WASHINGTON — The White House indicated that the Trump administration was moving ahead with seeking negotiations to end the war in the Middle East, even as the two-week ceasefire President Donald Trump announced less than 24 hours earlier appears to be teetering amid accusations of violations from Iran.
Addressing reporters at Wednesday’s White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. was moving into the “next phase,” which she referred to as a “negotiating period” aimed at working out the “fine points” of a potential agreement.
She announced that Trump was "dispatching" his negotiating team to the capital city of Pakistan for talks set to begin Saturday morning local time. Vice President JD Vance, Leavitt said, will lead the U.S. team and will be joined by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
But the comments from the White House’s top spokesperson came amid fresh questions about the standing of the fragile two-week ceasefire Trump announced Tuesday night, particularly amid new attacks from Israel on the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Just as Leavitt was taking the briefing room, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, took to X to declare that “the U.S. must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel.” He reposted a statement from the prime minister of Pakistan – a key country in negotiations – about the ceasefire deal reached Tuesday that said Lebanon was included in the halt in fighting.
Leavitt told reporters at the briefing that Lebanon was not included in the ceasefire.
Less than an hour later, tensions appeared to rise as Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused the U.S. of three violations of its 10 demands for an agreement to stop the conflict before the new negotiations have begun in a post on X. Ghalibaf cited the attacks in Lebanon, a drone allegedly entering Iranian airspace and a demand from the U.S. that Iran cannot pursue enrichment as the violations. He then called a bilateral ceasefire or negotiations in such a situation “unreasonable.”
Leavitt at the briefing pushed back on what she referred to as “inaccurate coverage” of the plan and how it came together as Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline Tuesday for Iran to agree to a deal or face decimation loomed. Leavitt sought to explain that the initial 10-point plan put forth by Iran was “fundamentally unserious” and “literally thrown in the garbage” by Trump. She said Tehran, staring down the deadline, then followed up with “a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan” that the administration deemed as having potential.
“President Trump and the team determined the new modified plan was a workable basis on which to negotiate and to align it with our own 15-point proposal,” Leavitt said.
Even as she said Trump’s negotiating team would spend the next two weeks focused on working out a deal with Iran as long as the Strait of Hormuz remained open, Leavitt sought to make clear that the president’s “red lines, namely, the end of Iranian enrichment” have not changed.
Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz – a critical waterway for the global supply of oil that Iran has been disrupting amid the war, sending prices surging – was a key part of the ceasefire plan announced Tuesday evening, but there has been significant confusion surrounding it in just the hours since.
Asked about reports that Iran closed the strait Wednesday in response to attacks in Lebanon, Leavitt called it “completely unacceptable” and reiterated that the president expects and demands it be “reopened immediately, quickly and safely.” At the same time, she maintained that there has been an “uptick of traffic” in the strait Wednesday and said the president has been told privately that the public reports on Iran closing it are “false.”
Leavitt also said Trump is against charging tolls for ships to pass through the strait.