President Donald Trump says he is canceling planned peace talks to end the war in Iran because the 18-hour flight to Pakistan just isn’t worth the trouble.
Trump, 79, phoned into Fox News to announce the move, saying he’d told his key negotiators, Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to stay home.
“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,’” Trump told Fox News, according to comments read aloud on air.
“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,’” he continued.
The president then confirmed via Truth Social that he had pulled out, saying it was simply “too much work.”
“I just cancelled the trip of my representatives going is Islamabad, Pakistan, to meet with the Iranians. Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!” he ranted.
“Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” the president continued.
A reporter who was in Islamabad to cover the talks, Caitlin Doornbos, reported on social media that she’d received a two-word text from the president, saying simply, “Come home!!!”
He said the scrapped visit will not necessarily mean renewed U.S. strikes.
“No. It doesn’t mean that. We haven’t thought about it yet,” Trump said in a phone call with Axios reporter Barak Ravid.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The news comes as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had recently departed Islamabad, where he was engaged in talks with Pakistani officials, according to CNN.
The canceled trip is the latest sign that the U.S. and Iran are far from reaching any sort of agreement.
A previous trip from Vice President JD Vance was unsuccessful, as he could not convince Iran to turn over its nuclear stockpile or curb its nuclear program.
Iranian officials have indicated they are fed up with talking with Kushner and Witkoff, as the two men had been heading U.S. negotiations with the country over its nuclear program, until Trump announced a full-out war with the country on Feb. 28.
Iran has indicated that it now views those negotiations as having been done in bad faith, when the U.S. really just wanted to strike the country. Officials have said they will only negotiate moving forward with Vance, who has long spoken out against U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
The talks between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad had always been on shaky ground.
It also appears the president doesn’t know who exactly is leading the country or who the U.S. is dealing with, after the Feb. 28 strikes killed nearly every Iranian regime leader.
On Friday, Trump told Reuters, “We’re dealing with the people in charge now.” But one day earlier, he told reporters he didn’t know who the Iranian leadership was.
