Write a short, clear, factual news headline based on this article:
François Picard is pleased to welcome Aaron David Miller, former State Department Middle East negotiator, and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Miller has spent decades working in diplomacy, and he does not see a coherent strategy playing out here, just improvisation shaped by pressure, personality, and shifting leverage. The current negotiations surrounding Iran, Israel, and Lebanon are not driven by trust or a shared vision of resolution, but by tactical necessity and asymmetric perceptions of advantage. According to Miller, the United States is seeking an exit from a conflict it chose to enter, while Iran perceives itself as strategically ascendant and therefore in no rush to compromise, despite widespread damage from relentless airstrikes. The diplomatic architecture being assembled, through intermediaries, informal envoys, and unclear mandates, reflects not strength, but fragmentation within decision-making processes. Progress will not emerge, Miller argues, from symbolic gestures or improvised channels, but from direct, disciplined negotiation grounded in an understanding of history, geography, and the legitimate interests of all actors involved.
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Article:
François Picard is pleased to welcome Aaron David Miller, former State Department Middle East negotiator, and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Miller has spent decades working in diplomacy, and he does not see a coherent strategy playing out here, just improvisation shaped by pressure, personality, and shifting leverage. The current negotiations surrounding Iran, Israel, and Lebanon are not driven by trust or a shared vision of resolution, but by tactical necessity and asymmetric perceptions of advantage. According to Miller, the United States is seeking an exit from a conflict it chose to enter, while Iran perceives itself as strategically ascendant and therefore in no rush to compromise, despite widespread damage from relentless airstrikes. The diplomatic architecture being assembled, through intermediaries, informal envoys, and unclear mandates, reflects not strength, but fragmentation within decision-making processes. Progress will not emerge, Miller argues, from symbolic gestures or improvised channels, but from direct, disciplined negotiation grounded in an understanding of history, geography, and the legitimate interests of all actors involved.
About 27 million people who are eligible to vote must choose between a record 35 presidential candidates as well as contenders for the bicameral congress – all from a ballot sheet measuring nearly half a metre, the longest in the country’s history.
The fight against crime tops voter concerns amid record homicide and extortion rates but political corruption comes a close second. Four former presidents are in jail, most of them linked to bribery cases involving the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
Keiko Fujimori, a three-time presidential candidate and the daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, holds a narrow lead in opinion polls. She is closely followed by the comedian Carlos Álvarez and two former mayors of Lima, the ultra-conservative Rafael López Aliaga and the media mogul Ricardo Belmont.
Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, holds a narrow lead in the opinion polls. Photograph: Renato Pajuelo/EPA
None of the candidates is polling above 15%, making a runoff on 7 June almost certain, according to Urpi Torrado, of the polling company Datum Internacional.
“This is one of the most unpredictable elections on record,” said Torrado. “There could be surprises this Sunday because we don’t know who will make it through to the second round.”
Fujimori, 50, is making her fourth bid for the presidency, having reached the runoff in the last three elections (2021, 2016 and 2011) and losing by extremely narrow margins each time. The rightwinger served as first lady in the autocratic 1990s government of her late father, who was convicted over corruption and human rights abuses and spent 16 years in prison.
Ricardo Belmont, who was Lima’s mayor from 1990 to 1995, has risen in most opinion polls, winning the younger vote with his upbeat messaging and the slogan “hugs not bullets”, borrowed from the former Mexican leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Gonzalo Banda, a Peruvian political analyst and doctoral researcher at University College of London’s Institute of the Americas, called Belmont an “anti-establishment candidate catching votes from the right, the left and the centre”. The 80-year-old is also known for making xenophobic and sexist remarks.
A band plays in support of Jorge Nieto, a former Peruvian defence minister, at a rally in Lima on Thursday. Photograph: Sebastián Blanco/EPA
López Aliaga, who was Lima’s mayor until a few months ago, has run a hard-right campaign littered with disinformation, hate speech and threats against journalists and opponents. But the 65-year-old rail magnate, who has opposed same-sex marriage and pledged to refuse abortion to underage rape victims, has slipped in the polls.
The surprise entry is Álvarez, one of Peru’s best-known comedians, who has been imitating presidents for the last three decades. However, his proposals are far from lighthearted. He describes himself as an admirer of Donald Trump and El Salvador’s leader, Nayib Bukele, and his tough-on-crime campaign has focused on megaprisons and the death penalty.
“It is ironically poetic that due to this cycle of [political] decay in Peru, we could end up with a comedy performer who imitates politicians as president,” said Banda.
Other candidates include Roberto Sánchez, who has been endorsed by the ousted former populist leader Pedro Castillo and wears the same style of wide-brimmed sombrero. Centrist candidates include a former defence minister, Jorge Nieto, and a former university rector, Alfonso López Chau.
Torrado said: “No political leader has emerged who can generate a sense of hope, a feeling that this person could change the country’s political course or solve its problems. Peruvians feel that in recent years, politicians have turned their backs on the people.”
The US president also threatened to bomb Iran’s water treatment facilities as well as its power plants and bridges, repeating an earlier threat, if Tehran did not agree to abandon its nuclear weapons programme – the key sticking point between the two sides.
Trump’s surprise announcement of a blockade came after 21 hours of face-to-face peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad collapsed on Sunday morning.
JD Vance, the vice-president and head of the US team, said Iran had refused to give up the possibility of developing nuclear weapons, while the Iranian delegates said Washington needed to do more to win their trust.
Risking another increase in oil prices, Trump said he had instructed the US navy to begin “blockading any and all ships trying to enter, or leave, the strait of Hormuz” – and accused Iran of extortion with its own scheme of charging tolls to tankers.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by declaring that if any warships approached the strait to enforce a blockade – usually considered an act of war – it would be considered a breach of the current ceasefire and would be strongly dealt with. They insisted the strait remained under Iranian control.
Two US destroyers nevertheless crossed and recrossed the strait without incident on Saturday, although Iranian media said they had been threatened as they left. It was the start of a broader mine clearance mission, the US military said.
JD Vance (right) led the US delegation that also included the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff (centre), and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The president added that US warships would “seek and interdict every vessel” that had paid Iran since the start of the conflict and begin de-mining the central section of the strait, previously declared a “hazardous area” by Tehran, although it is unclear how many mines have actually been laid.
About 100 tankers have transited the strait since the US and Israel started bombing Iran, paying up to $2m each time for passage. Many were bound for China and India, carrying Iranian oil products, and chasing them down could complicate relations between the US and the importing.
The US and Iranian delegations left Pakistan soon after the talks ended. Vance said he had spoken with Donald Trump at least half a dozen times during the talks, held during a 14-day ceasefire announced by the US, Israel and Iran overnight on 7 and 8 April.
“We need to see an affirmative commitment that [Iran] will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance said. “That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, who had led Tehran’s negotiators, said that, although he and his colleagues had offered “constructive initiatives”, the US had been “unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations”.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said “excessive” US demands had hindered reaching an agreement, but the foreign ministry said more time was needed. “Naturally, from the beginning we should not have expected to reach an agreement in a single session,” the ministry’s spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei said, according to the state broadcaster IRIB.
Pakistani mediators called on the US and Iran to refrain from renewing hostilities and said they would try to arrange a fresh round of talks. “It is imperative that the parties continue to uphold their commitment to the ceasefire,” said Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (centre, left) met Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif (centre, right), in Islamabad before the talks. Photograph: Iranian Foreign Ministry/EPA
Vance was accompanied by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. They met Ghalibaf and the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, for several negotiating sessions at the Serena hotel in Islamabad, with Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir, also present.
Iran’s delegation arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the war. They carried shoes and bags of children killed during the bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.
A Pakistani source said the discussions, the highest level direct contact between the US and Iran since 1979, were unpredictable in tone. “There were mood swings from the two sides, and the temperature went up and down during the meeting,” a Pakistani source said after the first round.
In a subsequent Fox News interview, Trump threatened to restart the bombing of Iran if a deal could not be agreed, and threatened to target the country’s water supply as well as its bridges and power generation.
Trump said: “The only thing left, really, is their water, which would be very devastating to hit. I would hate to do it, but it’s their water, their desalinisation plans, their electric generating plants, which are very easy to hit.”
The president was also asked if gas and oil prices might be lower by the US midterms in November, an indication that attacking Iran was not an economic mistake. Prices “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher,” a non-committal Trump replied.
At least 11 were also reported killed in southern Lebanon by the country’s state news service, after at least 30 Israeli strikes in the region. Pope Leo XIV called for a ceasefire after his Sunday prayers, and said he felt “closer than ever” to the country’s people.
The war, which began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran six weeks ago, has killed at least 3,000 people in Iran, 2,020 in Lebanon, 23 in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. It has caused lasting damage to infrastructure in half a dozen Middle Eastern countries.
