US, Iran teams in Pakistan for peace talks amid doubts over Lebanon, sanctions

Iranian delegation dressed in black for "mourning" performance

The hardline Iranian delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in "mourning" for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other Iranians killed in the war. They carried shoes and bags of some of the students killed during a claimed but unverified US bombing of a school (located next to a military compound, in a tactic favoured also by Hezbollah), the Iranian government said on social media.

If the two sides hold face-to-face negotiations as expected, they would be the highest-level US-Iran talks since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the first direct talks since 2015, when they reached a deal on Iran's nuclear programme.

Trump scrapped the nuclear deal in 2018 during his first term in office.

The US president announced a two-week ceasefire in the war on Tuesday, halting US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, but it has not ended Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or calmed the parallel war between Israel and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

For the talks in Islamabad to succeed, the US and Iran should represent the views of their allies, said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, a government ally, and a former foreign minister.