Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are said to be unwelcome as negotiating partners with Iran.Image: keystone
According to a media report, the Iranian leadership no longer wants to talk to Trump’s favorite negotiators about a deal. Instead, the Iranians want Vice President JD Vance to take over.
March 25, 2026, 06:14March 25, 2026, 06:41
Business buddy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jahred Kushner are Donald Trump’s favorite geopolitical negotiators. The two played a central role in the agreed ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and also in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, where there is still no sign of progress.
The Witkoff/Kushner duo is also expected to represent the USA in the war with Iran. But according to a report by… Guardian the Iranian leadership has had enough of the two negotiators. The mullahs’ regime has told the US government that it is no longer willing to work with Witkoff and Kushner. Instead, the Iranians are demanding that US Vice President JD Vance negotiate with them, the British newspaper said, citing an anonymous diplomatic source.
Witkoff and Kushner were already negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. This was also the case when Trump began the war against the country. According to the source, the Iranian regime views the two negotiators as insufficiently influential and their availability as merely a pretext for the US to lull Iran into good faith about its supposed serious willingness to talk. However, there is no chance of serious talks with the current negotiating team, the source told the Guardian:
«With Witkoff and Kushner nothing will come of it. We have experienced this in the past.”
The Iranians instead demand that JD Vance negotiate with them. This is also because Vance was originally known as an isolationist and opposed US interventions abroad. Recently, Vance has shown himself to be opportunistic and avoided contradicting his president about the war. Nevertheless, the Iranians should see Vance as more likely to be willing to end the war.
According to media reports, the US government recently gave Iran a presented a 15-point planwhich is intended to provide a path to the end of the war. Trump has previously claimed several times that the Iranians were pushing for a negotiated solution. They contradicted the representation and instead explained that the USA had approached them with proposals for talks.
Either way: Donald Trump now actually seems ready to send his most important cabinet members into negotiations with Iran. He confirmed on Tuesday evening that both JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were involved in the latest talks CNN reported.
The current developments in the war in the ticker:
(con)