Trump pulls Witkoff and Kushner from Pakistan trip, says Iran’s leadership is in disarray

President Donald Trump scrapped a planned diplomatic trip by special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior adviser Jared Kushner to Pakistan for a second round of indirect negotiations with Iran, telling the pair he would not send them on an 18-hour flight “to sit around talking about nothing.” The cancellation, revealed in an exclusive Fox News interview on Saturday, marks a sharp escalation in pressure on Tehran after weeks of halting diplomacy that has produced no agreement.

Trump told Fox News White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie that he made the call shortly before the delegation was set to depart.

“I’ve told my people a little while ago they were getting ready to leave, and I said, ‘Nope, you’re not making an 18-hour flight to go there. We have all the cards. They can call us anytime they want, but you’re not going to be making any more 18-hour flights to sit around talking about nothing.'”

The move came just one day after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Friday that the administration had “certainly seen some progress from the Iranian side in the last couple of days” toward a potential deal. Whatever progress Leavitt described was evidently not enough to justify another round of travel.

A pattern of stalled talks

The canceled trip would have been the second round of U.S.-Iran negotiations conducted through Pakistani intermediaries during what the administration has called Operation Epic Fury. Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Islamabad alongside Witkoff and Kushner for the first round. That meeting ended without an agreement.

Vance himself had been scheduled to return to Pakistan earlier this week for another session. But as the broader Iran conflict has unfolded, the vice president was called back to the White House for meetings, and his trip was postponed indefinitely. When Witkoff and Kushner were then tapped to make the journey this weekend instead, Trump decided the whole exercise had run its course.

On Truth Social, the president laid out his reasoning in blunt terms, writing that he had “just cancelled the trip of my representatives going to Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the Iranians.” He cited “tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership'” and declared: “Nobody knows who is in charge, including them.”

The Washington Times reported Trump added a pointed coda: “If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Iran’s response: defiance dressed as diplomacy

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Islamabad on Saturday to meet with Pakistan’s prime minister, the very meeting the U.S. delegation would have attended on the other side of the table. Araghchi posted on X afterward, calling it a “very fruitful visit to Pakistan, whose good offices and brotherly efforts to bring back peace to our region we very much value.”

He then added a pointed jab at Washington: “Shared Iran’s position concerning workable framework to permanently end the war on Iran. Have yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy.”

That framing, casting the United States as the unserious party, is a familiar Tehran tactic. It also sidesteps the reality that two rounds of talks have now failed to produce any framework Iran was willing to sign. The regime’s foreign minister was still in Islamabad posturing for cameras while the American side had already walked away from the table.

The contrast between Araghchi’s claims and Trump’s assessment of internal chaos within Iran’s government is worth noting. Breitbart reported that Iranian officials had been signaling they preferred indirect contact only, a posture that itself suggests a regime uncertain about how far it can go in direct engagement with Washington.

Cancellation as leverage

Trump’s decision to cancel the trip rather than simply postpone it represents a deliberate shift in negotiating posture. For weeks, the administration had been willing to send its most senior figures, the vice president, the president’s own son-in-law, a special envoy, halfway around the world to sit across from Iranian intermediaries. That willingness, in Trump’s apparent view, had yielded nothing but wasted time and wasted leverage.

The Washington Examiner reported that after Trump pulled the plug, Iran sent a new proposal within ten minutes, one Trump described as better than its previous offer, though still not sufficient for a deal. If accurate, the speed of Tehran’s response validates the core logic: the regime moves when it believes the other side is willing to leave.

That dynamic is familiar to anyone who has watched Trump negotiate. He has consistently argued that American willingness to absorb inconvenience, long flights, open-ended timelines, repeated rounds of fruitless meetings, signals weakness to adversaries. Refusing to fly is, in this framework, a form of strength.

The New York Post noted Trump also objected to the expense of the travel, calling it “too much work” and too costly, a complaint that may resonate with taxpayers who have watched decades of Middle East diplomacy produce little but frequent-flyer miles for government officials.

No deal, but no return to conflict either

Asked whether the cancellation meant the United States would resume military operations against Iran, Trump was measured. “No. It doesn’t mean that,” he said. “We haven’t thought about it yet.” That answer leaves the door open to both continued diplomacy and renewed pressure, without committing to either.

The administration’s posture now appears to be one of strategic patience, or strategic indifference, depending on how one reads it. Trump has made clear he believes the United States holds the stronger hand. He has told Iran, in effect, to pick up the phone.

Whether Tehran will do so remains an open question. The regime’s public posture, through Araghchi, is that Iran has already shared a “workable framework” and is waiting on Washington. Trump’s public posture is that Iran’s leadership is too fractured to negotiate seriously. Both sides are, for the moment, waiting for the other to blink.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democratic efforts to force an end to the administration’s Iran military campaign, giving Trump a free hand to set the pace of both diplomacy and pressure.

The April 12 news conference in Islamabad, where Vance spoke while Witkoff and Kushner listened, now looks like it may have been the high-water mark of this round of engagement. The first meeting produced no deal. The second was postponed. The third was canceled before it started.

For an administration that has framed itself as willing to deal but unwilling to be strung along, the sequence tells a clear story. Trump sent his vice president, his son-in-law, and his special envoy to Pakistan. He got nothing back. Now he’s done flying.

The question is whether Iran’s leadership, whoever is actually in charge, understands that the phone works in both directions.

Diplomacy that requires 18-hour flights and produces nothing but press conferences is not diplomacy. It is theater. Trump, to his credit, has plenty to manage at home, and no interest in playing a bit part in someone else’s show.