Jared Kushner is heading to Pakistan tonight with Steve Witkoff for talks with Iran's foreign minister, while the White House keeps Vice President JD Vance in Washington and leaves open the possibility of sending him and Secretary of State Marco Rubio later if the discussions make progress. The meeting will bring the Iranian minister into Pakistan with a small team for a round of contacts that the White House describes as part of a wider push to test whether Tehran's posture can shift.
The talks are expected to be exploratory rather than a third round of negotiations, but the fact that Witkoff and Kushner already negotiated with the Iranians directly and indirectly before gives them unusual leverage going into the meeting. The White House press secretary announced the plan, saying the administration wants to see whether there is room for movement before elevating the talks to Vance and Rubio. If that happens, it would signal that the administration believes the channel is worth widening.
The diplomatic push lands on the same day President Trump extended a Jones Act waiver by 90 days, after first announcing a 60-day waiver in March. The measure was intended to stabilise energy prices and ease oil and gas shipments to the United States after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and new data compiled since the original waiver showed significantly more supply reaching U.S. ports faster. Brent crude retreated on the news, vacillating between $103 a barrel and more than $107, but it remained nearly 50 percent higher than it was on February 28, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
The squeeze on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz has not stayed contained to the Gulf. It has rippled through global maritime trade flows, including through the Panama Canal, and the impact of the naval blockade is being felt most strongly in the economic sphere. That is why the administration is treating the waiver as part of the same pressure campaign as the talks: one lever at the dock, another at the negotiating table.
The military picture is growing heavier too. Mark Kimmitt said a third U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East looks more like a build-up of capability than an immediate step toward escalation, describing the carrier as a floating airfield and saying it can also allow for rotation of existing forces. He said the deployment has a number of purposes, first and foremost to demonstrate capability to conduct further combat operations if necessary. In his words, it is unfortunately a dual blockade by two different countries, both the United States and Iran.
Elsewhere, the fallout from the conflict is reaching smaller and more symbolic places. Italian peacekeepers today replaced a statue of Jesus Christ in a village in southern Lebanon after an Israeli soldier was pictured apparently attacking the figure. Israel apologised and placed two soldiers under detention, while six other soldiers were questioned about the damage. Benjamin Netanyahu said the damage was wholly inconsistent with the values expected of the Israeli military. The image of the statue's replacement in a quiet village sits far from the diplomacy in Pakistan, but it points to the same reality: the war's consequences are now moving through politics, trade and daily life at once.