U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance on Mon­day said his lengthy talks with se­nior Iran­ian of­fi­cials in Switzer­land cre­at­ed a “good foun­da­tion for a suc­cess­ful fi­nal deal” as they ne­go­ti­ate bring­ing a per­ma­nent end to the war that the U.S. and Is­rael be­gan in late Feb­ru­ary.

“The fi­nal deal is the house,” Vance told re­porters af­ter ini­tial talks with Iran’s par­lia­men­tary speak­er Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf. “We set the foun­da­tion. We haven’t built the house, but we’ve laid a suc­cess­ful foun­da­tion to get to a good place for the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

Iran not­ed “ma­jor progress” to end the fight­ing in Lebanon and called that the first re­al test of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The me­di­a­tion ef­fort in Switzer­land, which start­ed Sun­day and stretched in­to ear­ly Mon­day, had rocky mo­ments. But the talks al­so led to some agree­ments, me­di­a­tors said, as tech­ni­cal talks con­tin­ue this week.

Vance floats un­freez­ing Iran­ian as­sets to pur­chase U.S. goods

The vice pres­i­dent sug­gest­ed that the U.S. could agree to un­freeze Iran­ian as­sets for pur­chas­es of U.S. soy, corn and wheat. He said Jared Kush­n­er, the son-in-law of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and one of the lead U.S. ne­go­tia­tors, came up with the idea with of­fi­cials from Qatar.

Vance said Qatar would have ap­proval over the process, and Iran­ian mon­ey that would be ac­ces­si­ble as sanc­tions were lift­ed “would ac­tu­al­ly go to buy Amer­i­can soy, Amer­i­can corn and Amer­i­can wheat for the ben­e­fit of the Iran­ian peo­ple.”

Iran, which has pressed for the un­freez­ing of bil­lions of dol­lars in as­sets, has not spo­ken to the idea of us­ing the funds to pur­chase Amer­i­can prod­ucts. The as­sets have been made in­ac­ces­si­ble over years of sanc­tions, bank­ing re­stric­tions and le­gal dis­putes im­posed by the U.S. and in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic.

High-lev­el talks have end­ed but tech­ni­cal talks con­tin­ue

A team led by U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance is to meet with Iran­ian ne­go­tia­tors led by par­lia­men­tary Speak­er Mo­ham­mad Bagher Qal­ibaf and For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi for talks on Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram as part of a frag­ile deal to end the Iran war.

In a joint state­ment, me­di­a­tors Pak­istan and Qatar said that while the high-lev­el en­gage­ment had end­ed, tech­ni­cal ne­go­ti­a­tions would con­tin­ue in Switzer­land.

The me­di­a­tors hailed “en­cour­ag­ing progress.”

The in­ter­im deal to end the fight­ing in Iran, signed last week by the lead­ers of the U.S. and Iran, sets a 60-day pe­ri­od for ne­go­tia­tors on is­sues in­clud­ing the fu­ture of Tehran’s nu­clear pro­gram amid con­cerns that it wants to use it for mil­i­tary pur­pos­es, a claim Iran de­nies.

Vance and U.S. of­fi­cials claimed progress on mul­ti­ple fronts, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of “mech­a­nisms” to en­sure the Strait of Hor­muz, a vi­tal wa­ter­way for glob­al en­er­gy ship­ments, re­mains open and that a cease­fire in the fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Iran-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants in south­ern Lebanon holds.

While he was re­turn­ing to Wash­ing­ton, Vance said the tech­ni­cal talks are crit­i­cal.

“We want­ed to set up a struc­ture for that so that you could have prop­er po­lit­i­cal over­sight, but ob­vi­ous­ly, as much as this place is very beau­ti­ful, I can’t stay here for the next 60 days,” Vance told re­porters.

U.S. en­voys Kush­n­er and Steve Witkoff are han­dling many of the tech­ni­cal de­tails.

Trump wasn’t in Switzer­land but loomed large over talks

The talks were jolt­ed by state­ments from Trump, who fired off com­ments from thou­sands of miles away that of­fend­ed the Ira­ni­ans.

Iran­ian state me­dia on Sun­day said talks had paused af­ter the “pub­li­ca­tion of an in­sult­ing mes­sage by the U.S. Pres­i­dent,” ac­cord­ing to Iran­ian state me­dia.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, the Ira­ni­ans re­mained on site and ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ued, ac­cord­ing to a se­nior U.S. diplo­mat, who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and briefed re­porters on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

The diplo­mat said among the is­sues dis­cussed was Iran’s mes­sag­ing as it re­lat­ed to the Strait of Hor­muz, which Iran’s mil­i­tary said it closed Sat­ur­day in re­sponse to con­tin­ued fight­ing in Lebanon. U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand has dis­put­ed that Iran closed the strait again.

Ahead of the talks, Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Ma­soud Pezeshkian had vowed to “nev­er back down from the right to en­rich ura­ni­um,” ac­cord­ing to state me­dia.

Trump on Sun­day told Fox News in a phone in­ter­view that Pezeshkian should watch what he says and threat­ened to take over Iran, ac­cord­ing to one of the news chan­nel’s cor­re­spon­dents.

Trump al­so post­ed on so­cial me­dia as ne­go­tia­tors worked: “Iran must im­me­di­ate­ly stop their high­ly paid PROX­IES in Lebanon from caus­ing trou­ble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, on­ly hard­er!!!”

Ira­ni­ans say there was progress on their top is­sue

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi wrote on X that me­di­a­tors de­liv­ered “ma­jor progress to end the Lebanon War.” But he said the first “re­al test” of ne­go­ti­a­tions would be whether the mech­a­nism suc­ceeds in halt­ing the fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah.

Iran has in­sist­ed on first ad­dress­ing the fight­ing in Lebanon. Nei­ther Is­rael nor Hezbol­lah is a sig­na­to­ry to the U.S.-Iran deal.

A re­newed cease­fire in Lebanon ap­peared to be hold­ing, and Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it would lift move­ment re­stric­tions for res­i­dents near the Is­rael-Lebanon bor­der on Mon­day.

Cau­tious calm con­tin­ued Mon­day in Lebanon, with no Is­raeli strikes re­port­ed overnight. Hezbol­lah has not an­nounced any at­tacks on Is­raeli forces since Sat­ur­day.

The lull in fight­ing in Lebanon is the longest since the lat­est Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war be­gan on March 2.

“This re­gion has been a bas­ket case for a very long time,” Vance said. —OB­BUER­GEN, Switzer­land (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI, JAMEY KEAT­EN, SE­UNG MIN KIM and JOSH BOAK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Se­ung Min Kim re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Ab­by Sewell in Beirut, David Ris­ing in Bangkok and Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed to this sto­ry.