Iran says Lebanon ceasefire, asset release conditions for Islamabad talks

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Friday that a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets must be fulfilled before negotiations with the United States begin in Islamabad on Saturday.

“Two of the measures mutually agreed upon between the parties have yet to be implemented: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of Iran’s blocked assets,” he said in a post on X, adding that “these two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin.”

Ghalibaf made the remarks shortly after US Vice President JD Vance boarded a plane to Islamabad for talks on turning a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran into a permanent truce to end the war between the US, Israel and Iran.

The war extended to Lebanon in early March after the Iran-backed Hezbollah launched an initial attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed alongside other senior officials during US-Israeli strikes in Tehran on February 28, which marked the onset of the war.

Unblocking frozen Iranian assets had not previously been publicly set as a precondition for talks, although full sanctions relief is among Iran's 10 demands. The exact value of Iran’s frozen assets remains unclear, but several estimates place the total at over $100 billion.

"If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find the negotiating team is not that receptive," Vance told reporters before flying to Islamabad.

Since the truce was first announced on Wednesday, Iran has maintained that it included Lebanon, where Israel's war has killed nearly 1,900 people since the start of March.

“Lebanon and the entire Resistance Axis, as Iran’s allies, form an inseparable part of the ceasefire,” Ghalibaf said on Thursday. “Ceasefire violations carry explicit costs and STRONG responses.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator between Iran and the US, has said that Lebanon was part of the deal as one of Iran's demands in its 10-point peace plan presented to Washington.

The Lebanese health ministry said late Wednesday that Israeli strikes had resulted in “182 deaths and 890 injuries,” according to preliminary figures, adding that the total number of casualties from Israeli strikes in Lebanon “between March 2 and April 8 had risen to 1,739 deaths and 5,873 injuries.”

Vance told reporters on Wednesday that "I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn't," saying "this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding."

He added that Israel "as I understand it... have actually offered" to "check themselves a little bit" in Lebanon because "they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful," but "that is not because that is part of the ceasefire."

US President Donald Trump said in a Friday post on Truth Social, “The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”

Iran has maintained a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a significant share of global trade, though traffic through the waterway has yet to return to normal despite the ceasefire.