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a deal,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, adding that further talks “would very likely” be in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s military confirmed Field Marshal Asim Munir had arrived in Tehran.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also arrived in Saudi Arabia yesterday at the start of a four-day tour before a possible second round of US-Iran peace talks, his office said in a statement. Sharif will visit Qatar and Turkey on his trip.

“I think you’re going to be watching an amazing two days ahead,” Trump told ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, according to a post by the reporter on X, adding he did not think it would be necessary to extend a two-week ceasefire that expires next week.

“I think it’s close to over, yeah. I mean, I view it as very close to over,” Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network conducted Tuesday and broadcast yesterday. “We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.”

Officials from Pakistan and Gulf states also said both sides could return to Islamabad in the coming days.

The talks last weekend broke down without an agreement to end the war, which Trump launched alongside Israel on February 28, triggering Iranian attacks on Iran’s Gulf neighbours and reigniting a conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The US military said it was turning back more vessels, including the US-sanctioned, Chinese-owned tanker Rich Starry, which was seen heading back through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday.

A US destroyer stopped two oil tankers attempting to leave the Iranian port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday, a US official said.

While Iran and the United States appear so far to have avoided a major confrontation at sea since the United States began its blockade on Monday, Tehran has said it would retaliate against military action.

Iran’s joint military command warned it would halt trade flows in the Gulf, the Sea of Oman and the Red Sea, which connects to the Suez Canal, if the US blockade continued.

Trump has also threatened to escalate if the war resumes. He told Fox Business Network: “...We could take out every one of their bridges in one hour. We could take out every one of their power plants, electric power plants, in one hour. We don’t want to do that...so we’ll see what happens.”

The US president also claimed that China has agreed not to send weapons to Iran and that he has received personal assurances from leader Xi Jinping.

“They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to his planned May 14-15 summit with Xi in Beijing.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi, in a phone call yesterday, told his Iranian counterpart that Beijing “supports maintaining the momentum of the ceasefire and peace talks”.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer yesterday said he is “not going to yield” to pressure from the US president to join the conflict in Iran.

It comes after Trump told Sky News that when the US asked the UK for help, “they were not there”. He also suggested the tariff agreement with the UK “can always be changed”.

Keir told the Commons: “I’m not going to change my mind, I’m not going to yield, it is not in our national interest to join this war, and we will not do so.”

Trump told the New York Post on Tuesday that his negotiators were likely to return to Pakistan, thanks largely to the “great job” army chief Munir was doing to moderate the talks.

Speaking later at an event in Georgia, Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation at last weekend’s talks, said Trump wanted to make a “grand bargain” with Iran, but there was a lot of mistrust between the two countries.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions were a key sticking point at last weekend’s talks. The US had proposed a 20-year suspension of all nuclear activity by Iran -- an apparent concession from longstanding demands for a permanent ban -- while Tehran had suggested a halt of 3 to 5 years, according to people familiar with the proposals.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said the length of any moratorium on Iranian uranium enrichment was a political decision and suggested Iran might accept a compromise as a confidence-building measure.

Washington has also pressed for any enriched nuclear material to be removed from Iran, while Tehran has demanded that international sanctions against it be lifted.

One source involved in the talks said back-channel talks had made progress in narrowing gaps, bringing the two sides closer to a deal that could be put forward at a new round of talks.