{"id":372186,"date":"2026-03-30T00:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T00:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/372186\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T00:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T00:40:09","slug":"pakistan-to-host-war-talks-as-iran-says-us-ground-troops-would-be-set-on-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/372186\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan to \u2018host war talks\u2019 as Iran says US ground troops would be set on fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pakistan has announced it will soon host talks between the US and Iran, although there was no immediate word from the two nations.<\/p>\n

It was also unclear in the announcement on Sunday whether the talks would be direct or indirect.<\/p>\n

\u201cPakistan is very happy that both Iran and the US have expressed their confidence in Pakistan to facilitate the talks,\u201d foreign minister Ishaq Dar said in a televised speech after top diplomats from Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia met in Islamabad.<\/p>\n

\u201cPakistan will be honoured to host and facilitate meaningful talks between the two sides in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pakistan later said the diplomats had departed for their home countries. The talks were originally scheduled to continue on Monday.<\/p>\n

Pakistan\u2019s foreign ministry did not answer questions, and Iran\u2019s mission to the United Nations declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Pakistan has emerged as a mediator, having relatively good ties with both Washington DC and Tehran.<\/p>\n

Pakistani officials have said their public effort follows weeks of quiet diplomacy, while providing few details.<\/p>\n

\"IranAmerican sailors and marines aboard USS Tripoli (LHA 7) (US Central Command via AP)\n<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iran\u2019s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, dismissed the talks in Pakistan as a cover after some 2,500 US marines trained in amphibious landings arrived in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

He said Iranian forces were \u201cwaiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever,\u201d according to state media.<\/p>\n

Iran also threatened to attack homes of US and Israeli \u201ccommanders and political officials\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the Iranian military\u2019s joint command, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, cited the \u201ctargeting of residential homes of the Iranian people in various cities\u201d and other \u201cmalicious actions\u201d, state media reported.<\/p>\n

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military will widen its invasion of Lebanon, expanding the \u201cexisting security strip\u201d in that country\u2019s south while targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.<\/p>\n

No details were released.<\/p>\n

The war has threatened global supplies of oil, natural gas and fertiliser and disrupted air travel.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s grip on the strategic Strait of Hormuz has shaken markets and prices, and now the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels\u2019 entry into the war could threaten shipping on another crucial waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb strait to the Red Sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know at what moment our homes could be targeted,\u201d said Razzak Saghir al-Mousawi, 71, describing relentless airstrikes as Iranians crossing into Iraq urged the US to end the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am definitely afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 3,000 people have been killed in the war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran that triggered Iranian attacks on Israel and neighbouring Gulf Arab states.<\/p>\n

The war continues on the digital front as well.<\/p>\n

\"PakistanEgyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, Saudi Arabia\u2019s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, Pakistan\u2019s foreign minister Ishaq Dar and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan in Islamabad (AP)\n<\/p>\n

Pakistan said the foreign ministers met in Islamabad without US or Israeli participation, days after the US offered Iran a 15-point \u201caction list\u201d as a framework for a possible peace deal.<\/p>\n

Egypt\u2019s Badr Abdelatty said the meetings are aimed at opening a \u201cdirect dialogue\u201d between the US and Iran, which have largely communicated through mediators.<\/p>\n

Both this war and last year\u2019s 12-day war began during rounds of indirect talks.<\/p>\n

Iranian officials have rejected the US framework and publicly dismissed the idea of negotiating under pressure.<\/p>\n

But Press TV, the English-language arm of Iran\u2019s state broadcaster, reported last week that Tehran had drafted its own five-point proposal that reportedly called for a halt to killing Iranian officials, guarantees against future attacks, reparations and Iran\u2019s \u201cexercise of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz\u201d.<\/p>\n

Iran has eased some restrictions on commercial ships in the strait, agreeing late on Saturday to allow 20 more Pakistani-flagged vessels to pass through.<\/p>\n

\"APTOPIXCarrying her belongings a woman crosses the Shalamcheh border crossing between Iran and Iraq (Leo Correa\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

It \u201csends a clear signal that Iran remains open for business with the world, provided the United States abandons coercion\u201d, said Asif Durrani, Pakistan\u2019s former ambassador to Iran.<\/p>\n

An adviser to the UAE, Anwar Gargash, called for any settlement to the war to include \u201cclear guarantees\u201d that Iranian attacks on neighbours will not be repeated.<\/p>\n

Mr Gargash said Iran\u2019s government has become \u201cthe main threat\u201d to Persian Gulf security and called for compensation for attacks on civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Iran on Sunday warned of escalation after Israeli airstrikes hit several universities, including ones that Israel claimed were used for nuclear research and development.<\/p>\n

Concerns over Iran\u2019s nuclear programme are at the heart of tensions.<\/p>\n

The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard warned that Iran would consider Israeli universities and branches of US universities in the region \u201clegitimate targets\u201d unless offered safety assurances for Iranian universities, state media reported.<\/p>\n

\"IranA member of the Iranian Red Crescent Society at Hypercar, an auto service centre, amid damages which according to the firm\u2019s officials were caused by strikes in Tehran (Vahid Salemi\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

US colleges have campuses in Qatar and the UAE, including Georgetown, New York and Northwestern universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the US government wants its universities in the region spared, it should condemn the bombardment\u201d of Iranian universities by midday on Monday, the Guard said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The American University of Beirut moved classes online and called it a precautionary measure.<\/p>\n

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said on Saturday that dozens of universities and research centres have been hit, among them the Iran University of Science and Technology and Isfahan University of Technology.<\/p>\n

Both sides in the war have threatened to attack civilian facilities, which critics have warned could be a war crime.<\/p>\n

In Lebanon, officials said more than 1,200 people have been killed.<\/p>\n

\"APTOPIXDisplaced people who fled Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sit inside tents used as shelters as a rainbow breaks through the rain in Beirut (Emilio Morenatti\/AP)\n<\/p>\n

There were fears of more deaths after Mr Netanyahu, speaking on a visit to northern Israel, said Israel was \u201cdetermined to fundamentally change the situation in the north\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said Hezbollah \u201cstill has residual capability to fire rockets at us\u201d.<\/p>\n

Late on Sunday, Israel\u2019s military said that over the past 24 hours its fighter jets had dropped more than 120 munitions in Tehran, targeting sites used for weapons research, development and production.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military said its air force had intercepted two drones launched from Yemen early on Monday morning.<\/p>\n

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for launching their first attack in the current war \u2013 a missile fired at Israel, which was also intercepted \u2013 early on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

And Iranian media reported early on Monday that one of the facilities of Tabriz Petrochemical was struck in a northern province of the country. They said no hazardous materials had been released.<\/p>\n

Iranian authorities say more than 1,900 people have been killed in the Islamic Republic, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, where Iranian-supported militia groups have entered the conflict, 80 members of the security forces have died.<\/p>\n

In Gulf states, 20 people have been killed. Four have been killed in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n

A young man who moved from Connecticut to Israel last year to join the military was killed during a combat operation in southern Lebanon on Saturday just weeks after he completed training, it emerged.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military identified the soldier as Sergeant Moshe Yitzchak Hacohen Katz, 22. He was originally from New Haven, Connecticut, according to family members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pakistan has announced it will soon host talks between the US and Iran, although there was no immediate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":372187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-372186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}