Inside the Vance, Kushner, Witkoff Islamabad talks

Serena Hotel, Islamabad Red Zone

Present:

US negotiating team: vice president JD Vance, special envoy Steven Witkoff, first-son-in-law Jared Kushner

Iranian negotiating team: parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi

Pakistani mediating team: prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, field marshal Asim Munir

Absent:

Donald J Trump, Marco Rubio – at UFC 327

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mohammad Pakpour, Abdolrahim Mousavi – dead

Kid Rock – firing automatic weapons at a crate of Bud Lite

10:00 Peace talks called to order by Shehbaz Sharif.

10:15 Peace talks delayed for fifteen minutes while Jared Kushner nips out to take a “high-level strategic call with EE about roaming charges.”

10:16 Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf thanks Sharif for “not allowing any women to distract us here today.”

10:17 Vice president Vance allows that “on certain issues, it is true that we have more in common than divides us.” 

10:20 Kushner leads a chant of “bros before hoes.” This is followed by solemn male nodding.

10:38 Abbas Araghchi gives opening statement on Iran’s behalf: “We come to this table as heirs to ancient Persia’s resolve. The ultimatums of debauched Westerners only sharpen our defiance. You come begging for peace, yet Iran speaks not in desperation. Ours is the battle cry of a civilisation that can never be broken for it is only by the mercy of almighty Allah that the decadent dogs of Hollywood have not been crushed already.”

11:17 Luxury real estate developer Steven Witkoff responds for America by pitching an opportunity to invest in some new condos on Miami Beach. 

12:00 Pause for lunch. Saffron rice and lamb stew/KFC Bargain Buckets.

12:30 Sharif introduces the first item on the agenda: Iran’s uranium enrichment program. 

16:20 Following five hours of attempts to explain the periodic table to the American delegation, culminating in Vance’s refusal to acknowledge the existence of atoms, Iran’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar goes for a lie down.

16:21 Interpreting this as a negotiating victory, Kushner uses his diplomatic immunity to order in some BuzzBallz. 

16:25 While America’s best minds try to work out the quickest way to source alcohol in Pakistan, Ghalibaf gives a statement to Al Jazeera that Iran’s uranium enrichment program will continue “unimpeded”.

16:30 Vance counters by telling Fox News “Hell they will. These so-called elements are Muslamic hocus pocus. You can’t enrich something that doesn’t exist.” He then pretends to drop a microphone that doesn’t exist. 

16:42 With a Chinook carrying sixteen pallets of BuzzBallz confirmed inbound from New Delhi, the American delegation attempts to depart, but is blocked when one of their Humvees collides with a poorly parked Iranian Peugeot 405 in the Serena Hotel’s multistorey carpark.

18:05 Pakistan’s field marshal Asim Munir resolves the situation and tells Reuters there’s been a “breakthrough in shared energy cooperation commitments between the US and Iran” after booking both delegations into the same Uber XL back to their hotels.

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Day Two

12 April 2026

09:00 Shehbaz Sharif brings the meeting to order. Iran’s head of Supreme National Security Council Ali Akbar Ahmadian apologises for the absence of Ishaq Dar, “who, due to reasons of being unable to communicate Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements to an idiot, will not be joining us for the rest of his life.”

09:01 It is noted that lead US negotiators vice president JD Vance and first-son-in-law Jared Kushner are also absent.

09:02 Shehbaz Shariff agrees to an adjournment while the US diplomatic team locate their leads. Araghchi observes: “They’ll be in the last place you look. Like that F15.”

11:37 Following a CIA-led manhunt that culminates in the Americans having to blow up four of their own MH-6 helicopters, two MC-130J transport aircraft, and a cricket pavilion, the US’s lead envoys are located, apparently unslept, shouting “Spring Break” in a luxury rooftop shisha bar in Rawalpindi. 

11:55 Kushner, escorted by the Secret Service, in a pair of Hawaiian shorts and a traditional embroidered Pakistani waistcoat and Vance, with a henna Mike Tyson-style face tattoo, offer fist bumps to as many as possible of their cheering, three hundred strong US delegation.

11:56 Swigging heavily from a can of Monster, Vance opens the day’s diplomatic efforts by exclaiming: “Yo Mohammed, Abbas, Uncle Sam ain’t fuckin’ around no more. How about you give in to all our demands, or we bomb Eye-ran back to the stone age?” Abbas Araghchi responds by asking if Vance knows that special envoy Jared Kushner is only wearing one shoe.

11:57 Witkoff, keen to move things along, identifies “unlocking the blockade of an internationally significant transport chokepoint” as the day’s primary order of business.

17:33 After five gruelling hours of negotiations dedicated to “eliminating the primary obstruction to bilateral mobility” and “moving static assets in a contested transit corridor”, it becomes clear that while the Iranians have been talking about the Strait of Hormuz, the Americans are still talking about moving the Peugeot that’s blocking their Humvees in the hotel car park.

17:45 Breakthrough. The Iranians concede that the red Peugeot 405 blocking the carpark belonged to Ishaq Dar who “might have had the keys in his pocket when we withdrew him from frontline duties” and, in return for America releasing $27bn of frozen assets, they notify United States frogmen about the stretch of the Korang river where their communications team was permanently streamlined.

18:02 A major step forward for the Americans, and with a situation that didn’t exist before they created it now resolved, attention turns to the Strait of Hormuz, with Witkoff declaring that “unless Iran immediately reopens the Strait that everyone else wants reopened, we will be blockading it ourselves.”

18:05 Witkoff, Vance and Kushner are aware that a lot of insider trading and market manipulation has not been getting done without them. With UFC 327 about to start on Paramount+, they unilaterally end negotiations. 

18:00 In his closing statement Vance declares “another tremendous victory for our glorious leader Donald J Trump. The Iranians came here to play 2, maybe 3D, chess. It didn’t matter. We understood their country better than they did. The blockade is blockaded. The Peugeot is being towed. America is back. And this time, we’ve got the keys.”

*Yes, it’s satire. For more world exclusives from Henry Morris, read his Substack