Tense-faced JD Vance faces walkout at Lucerne summit as Trump's threats cast shadow over Iran talks

JD Vance arrived in Switzerland for high-stakes peace talks with Iran. He joined US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, at the Bürgenstock resort for what he described as 'historic' talks. 'I’m looking forward to starting the technical talks with the Iranians, the Pakistanis, and the Qataris,' Vance told reporters before departing Joint Base Andrews. Representing Tehran at the negotiating table were chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and a team of senior officials overseeing Iran's oil, security and central banking sectors.

Perched above Lake Lucerne, the Bürgenstock resort provided a dramatic backdrop for the high-stakes negotiations. The gathering, dubbed the Lake Lucerne Summit, is a follow-up to the implementation of a memorandum of understanding signed with the US this week. The MOU called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened and for a halt to all hostilities, including in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded in March. The two sides established a two-month timeline to finalize the details and resolve issues that have plagued negotiators for years.

The opening day of high-stakes negotiation talks was thrown into uncertainty after threats from President Donald Trump. 'You won’t even make it back to your f**king country,' an irate Trump told Iran’s leaders. The US president threatened to bomb Iran and even kidnap the Iranian negotiating team unless the Strait of Hormuz was reopened, forcing mediators Qatar and Pakistan to continue negotiations behind the scenes. 'Iran must immediately stop their highly paid proxies in Lebanon from causing trouble,' Trump wrote on social media. 'If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again.' Trump’s series of aggressive threats on social media and in TV interviews reached the negotiating site, angering the Iranian team, who said the threats posed an unacceptable risk to their personal safety. They noted that the memorandum Trump signed last week included a non-aggression pact.

In Lucerne, Vance insisted that Trump had tasked him with using the negotiations as an opportunity to reset relations with Iran. Lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, dismissed the threats, arguing that if such tactics were effective, Washington would not find itself in its current position. He insisted Tehran was not influenced by American warnings. Despite that public stance, the Iranian delegation chose to walk out of the talks in protest, a move driven in part by political pressure at home, where negotiators face expectations to demonstrate skepticism and caution toward the Trump administration's diplomatic efforts.

As the negotiation talks continued, several reports went viral claiming that Vance was left out in the cold by Qatari officials during the closely watched peace negotiations. Speculation about an awkward moment arose after a video went viral showing Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani walking past Vance to embrace Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir. However, United States officials have denied any claims of a diplomatic snub, insisting that in reality, the vice president had met with Al Thani for hours beforehand.

Vance downplayed the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying progress had been made toward ending hostilities there. 'These things are always a little bit messy,' he said. Using a notably more conciliatory tone than Trump, he added, 'What the president has asked us to do is turn over a new leaf, to transform our relationship with the people of Iran...' The Iranian delegation refused to appear on camera alongside the US delegation, which was led by Vance, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US special envoy Steve Witkoff. However, the two delegations were briefly filmed in the same room, and the afternoon talks included Iran, the US, Pakistan and Qatar in a quadrilateral format.