US Vice President JD Vance says he is looking ‌forward to having positive negotiations with Iran as he left for talks in Pakistan ‌with a warning ‌to ⁠the other side not to “play ​us”.

“We’re looking forward to the negotiation. I think it’s going to be positive,” Vance told ⁠reporters ‌before leaving Washington DC.

“As ​the president of the ​United States ‌said, if the Iranians are willing ​to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly ​willing to ​extend the ​open hand,” Vance ‌said.

“If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find the ​negotiating team is not that ​receptive.”

According to the White House, the US delegation led by Vance also includes special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Security sources in Pakistan have indicated that preliminary talks at expert level are planned.

A meeting of the chief negotiators is planned for Saturday.

The talks could therefore continue into Sunday if necessary.

The Strait of Hormuz remained ‌closed and Israel launched new attacks on Lebanon on Friday, which the United States and Iran each flagged as violations of their ceasefire deal.

The two-day-old ceasefire has halted the campaign of US and Israeli air strikes on Iran. ‌

But it has so far done nothing to end the blockade of the strait, which has caused the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies, or to calm a parallel war waged by Israel against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

Iran was doing a “very poor job” of letting oil through the strait, Trump said in a social media post.

He also warned Iran against trying to collect fees from ships crossing it: “That is not the agreement we have!”

Iran said ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon were a violation of the truce.

Israeli forces launched the biggest attack of the war hours after the ceasefire was announced, killing more than 250 Lebanese in surprise strikes on heavily populated areas.

Israeli strikes continued across southern Lebanon on Friday, with more than a dozen people ‌reported killed in various towns.

One ‌strike killed eight members of Lebanese ⁠state security forces, Lebanon’s state media said.

In a shift on Thursday, Israel said it would open separate talks with the Lebanese government aimed at ending the war there and disarming Hezbollah.

A ​US State Department official confirmed the United States would host an Israeli-Lebanese meeting ⁠next week.

A Pakistani source said “everything is on track” for the US-Iran peace talks to start on Saturday as planned.

Speaking before the reports of the latest Israeli strikes on Lebanon, he said a reduction in violence there was positive.

“It has de-escalated. Good sign.”

But Iran’s parliament ‌Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said ‌on Friday that two ‌previously agreed measures, a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release ‌of Iran’s blocked ‌assets, ⁠must be implemented ​before negotiations begin.

In a post on X on Friday, ⁠Qalibaf ‌said the ​steps were part of ​commitments made ‌between the parties ​and warned that talks should not start ​until ​they ​were fulfilled.

Advance teams from both countries were already in place in the five-star Serena hotel in central Islamabad where both delegations would stay for the duration of the talks.

There were no face-to-face meetings planned for Friday but Pakistan was relaying messages between them, the source said.

The centre of Islamabad was placed under complete lockdown for a hastily announced public holiday, with a security perimeter ⁠thrown up for a 3km “red zone” around the hotel.

Australia keeps watch

Australian leaders will be closely watching US-Iran peace talks in Pakistan over the weekend, while community groups call for the human impact not to be lost.

Questions are being raised about how long a ceasefire can be maintained and what a strategic withdrawal by the US would look like.

Middle Eastern community groups in Australia say much of the loss of innocent lives and destruction of civilian infrastructure amounts to war crimes which are not being acknowledged by Australia’s leaders.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles described the weekend’s peace talks as “incredibly important,” saying Australia would like to see the ceasefire become permanent.

“What we need to see … moving forward is for this ceasefire to become permanent and for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened and the global fuel supply chain to be returned to normal,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.

“That’s clearly where the global national interest lies – it’s very much where Australia’s national interest lies.”

However, Associate Professor in International Relations at UNSW, Jessica Genauer said a temporary ceasefire between US and Iran so far had proven “exceptionally fragile,” and that continued hostilities between Israel and Lebanon made a resolution even more difficult.

“I expect that out of the weekend we might see a continued agreement to cease hostilities and continue talking, but I definitely do not expect that we’re going to see any kind of substantial political agreement coming out of this weekend,” she said.

Iran is entering the talks with conditions including it would continue enriching uranium, for sanctions to be lifted, and to have control over the Strait of Hormuz, which Prof Genauer says the US would not be able to agree to.

“The two sides are still so far apart, and I don’t think that ultimately either side are going to compromise enough on any of those three issues,” she said.

Masoomeh Alaibakhsh from the Benevolent Iranian Women’s Association will take part in a vigil outside the Iranian embassy in Canberra on Sunday to raise awareness of what she described as “war crimes”.

The Iranian-Australian told AAP it was difficult to sleep at night thinking about the widespread devastation so far, including the bombing of a girl’s school in southern Iran which the United Nations says reportedly killed about 150 people, including many students.

“You can never forgive those who attacked and caused this catastrophe to happen,” Dr Alaibakhsh said.

“Even if a permanent cease fire could be in place forever in the region, those … children will never go back to school or to their homes.”

—AAP