orianomattei

  Islamabad, Pakistan –  Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says there were moments in the final stretch of negotiations between the United States and Iran when the talks appeared close to collapse. Each time, he told the National Assembly on Monday, it was Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s powerful military chief, who kept the deliberations alive. end of list “Throughout this period, he was awake all day and night,” Sharif told lawmakers, adding that Munir had “sacrificed day and night to extinguish the flames of war”. There were many moments, he said, when “it felt like the negotiations would come to a halt” but the army chief did not give up. “If this journey had not continued,” Sharif said, “the dream of peace would have been shattered.” The acknowledgement, unusually specific for a process conducted almost entirely out of public view, offered the clearest glimpse yet into how Pakistan pulled off what many had considered an improbable task: brokering a deal to end...

  The United States has transferred 22 crew members from the Iranian container ship, the  Touska , to Pakistan, in what Islamabad describes as a “confidence-building measure” during tension in the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesman, Captain Tim Hawkins, said the crew had been handed over for repatriation. Pakistan’s foreign ministry confirmed the transfer, saying the sailors would be returned to Iranian authorities. The Touska was seized by US forces in the Gulf of Oman in the early hours of April 20, in what Tehran described as an act of “piracy”, after the US declared a naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iran had effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz following the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran. On Monday, tensions continued to escalate in and around the Strait of Hormuz. First, US President Donald Trump announced that US naval ships would help guide stranded vessels through the strait in an operation he dubbed “Project Freedom”. Iran issued a new ...