US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that talks with Iran could resume in Pakistan in the coming days after several rounds of negotiations over the weekend failed to yield results, leaving key issues that threaten to end the lull in fighting unaddressed, even as Israel vowed that its campaign against the Islamic Republic wouldn’t end until the regime has fallen.

Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, said that the outlet’s foreign policy correspondent, who is currently in Islamabad, “should stay there, really, because something could be happening over the next two days.”

He told the newspaper that Pakistan’s Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was doing a “great job” on the talks.

“He’s fantastic, and therefore it’s more likely that we go back there,” Trump said.

Less than an hour earlier, however, Trump had given the Post a more pessimistic estimation, telling it that talks with Iran were progressing slowly and that if a meeting were to happen, it would likely not be in Pakistan.

“Things are happening, but a little bit slow… I don’t think it’ll be [in Pakistan] that we have our meeting,” he said. “We’ll probably go to another location. We have another location in mind.”

Pressed on whether the US was considering Turkey as the next host, Trump responded: “No, somebody more central. Europe, maybe.”

It was unclear whether there was an actual development in the talks in the time between his two interviews.

Sources also told Reuters that negotiating teams from the US and Iran could return to Islamabad this week to resume talks to end the war.

But as Trump turned his attention to negotiating with Iran’s leadership amid the shaky ceasefire, Mossad Chief David Barnea suggested that Israel wouldn’t consider its campaign over until that same leadership is replaced.

“Our mission has yet to be completed,” Barnea said at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. “We didn’t think that this mission would be completed immediately with the end of the battles. But we planned intensively for our campaign to continue and achieve results even in the period after the strikes in Tehran.”

Mossad’s responsibility in the matter, he said, will end “only when this radical regime is replaced.”

“The regime that wants to destroy us must disappear from the world,” he said of Iran’s leadership, which is avowed to destroying Israel.

Regime change in Iran, said the spy chief, “is our mission. We will not stand by, watching, in the face of another existential threat.”

Barnea revealed that the Mossad operated “in the heart of Tehran” during the campaign against Iran.

“We brought precise intelligence to the Air Force, and we hit missiles that threatened Israel,” he said.

Israel and the US launched their campaign against Iran on February 28 to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs — and “create the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, the military and other Israeli leaders have said.

While the broader Islamic Republic regime has not fallen, Trump has repeatedly tried to frame the killing of Khamenei and dozens of other top officials in air strikes by the US and Israel as tantamount to the collapse of the regime as a whole.

The developments came after the collapse of weekend negotiations between Iran and the US, prompting Washington to impose a blockade on Iranian ports.

While the US blockade drew angry rhetoric from Tehran, signs that diplomatic engagement might continue helped calm oil markets, pushing benchmark prices below $100 on Tuesday.

The highest-level talks between the two adversaries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution ended in the Pakistani capital without a breakthrough over the weekend, raising doubts over the survival of a two-week ceasefire that still has a week to run.

But a source involved in the talks said on Tuesday that a proposal had been shared with Washington and Tehran to resend their delegations.

“No firm date has been set, with the delegations keeping Friday through Sunday open,” a senior Iranian source said.

Trump said Iran had been in touch on Monday and wanted to make a deal, adding that he would not sanction any agreement that allowed Tehran to possess a nuclear weapon.

Since the United States and Israel began the war, Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to nearly all vessels except its own, saying passage would be permitted only under Iranian control and subject to a fee. The fallout has been widespread, as nearly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas previously flowed through the narrow waterway.

In a countermeasure, the US military said it began blocking shipping traffic in and out of Iran’s ports on Monday. Tehran has threatened to hit naval ships going through the strait and to retaliate against its Gulf neighbors’ ports.

The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said the blockade would be enforced against vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports in the Gulf and Gulf of Oman. It would not impede neutral transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz to or from non-Iranian destinations, it said in a note to seafarers seen by Reuters.

CENTCOM said Tuesday that no ships had made it past the blockade, and six merchant ships followed orders to turn back.

“During the first 24 hours, no ships made it past the US blockade and six merchant vessels complied with direction from US forces to turn around to re-enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman,” the statement read.

More than 10,000 US military personnel, more than a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft were enforcing the blockade, it said.

The Bloomberg outlet cited a source familiar with the developments as saying that Iran was weighing a short pause in shipment through the strait to avoid a clash with the US over the blockade that might derail further talks.

Oil supply forecasts cut

The US blockade has further clouded the outlook for global energy security and the supply of a vast array of goods that rely on petroleum.

The United States’ NATO allies, including Britain and France, said they would not be drawn into the conflict by taking part in the blockade, although they have offered to help safeguard the strait when an agreement is in place.

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will chair a video conference on Friday for countries willing to contribute to a defensive multilateral mission to restore freedom of navigation in the strait when security conditions permit, Macron’s office said.

France and Britain have been working in recent weeks to set up an operation to escort oil tankers and container ships to help ensure safe passage through the strait.

British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said on Tuesday she was “very frustrated and angry” over what she said was the United States’ failure to have a clear exit plan or objectives for the war in Iran, according to The Mirror newspaper.

“This is a war that we did not start. It was a war that we did not want. I feel very frustrated and angry that the US went into this war without a clear exit plan, without a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve,” Reeves, who is struggling to fire up Britain’s anemic economy, told the newspaper.

“And as a result, the Strait of Hormuz is now blocked,” she added.

Reeves is one of several British government ministers, including Prime Minister Starmer, to express growing exasperation at the actions in the Middle East of its close ally.

China, the main buyer of Iranian oil, said the US blockade was “dangerous and irresponsible” and would only aggravate tensions.

Reflecting the growing disruption, the International Energy Agency on Tuesday sharply cut its forecasts for global oil supply and demand growth, saying both are now expected to fall from 2025 levels as war in the Middle East disrupts oil flows and weighs on the global economy.

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