Iran’s president heads to Pakistan as US-Iran teams work to finalize a war-ending deal

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Iran’s president traveled to Pakistan for talks Tuesday with officials who have been mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war in the Middle East, even as discrepancies emerged on what had been agreed so far and violence broke out again in Lebanon.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit to Islamabad comes as technical teams were working on details of the deal following high-level negotiations in Switzerland on Monday led by U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

In Tehran, Iran's capital, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that no visits have been scheduled for the U.N. watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — to examine Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. Vance previously said the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for the IAEA to inspect the sites.

The IAEA has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war in 2025, but has not been granted access to the bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S. at the time.

Meanwhile, violence flared again in southern Lebanon, threatening the fragile ceasefire there, as Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing two people.

Any renewal of heavy fighting could threaten the broader diplomatic talks, since Iran has demanded that a full ceasefire in Lebanon be part of any comprehensive deal.

Security was tight in the area of Islamabad where the Iranian president was to meet with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It's Pezeshkian's first visit since the conflict started with the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.

Pezeshkian and Sharif were to hold a joint news conference after their discussions.

In the initial talks, marking the start of a 60-day diplomatic process that seeks to reach a permanent deal to end the Iran war, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a “de-confliction cell” to address the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. The U.S. said negotiators also discussed “mechanisms” to ensure that the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for oil transit that Iran had effectively blocked during the war, remains open.

Ahead of his meetings in Pakistan, Pezeshkian cautioned that “the effectiveness of the talks depends on full commitment to the agreed obligations and their precise implementation.”

“Progress on this path will be measured by practical adherence to accepted responsibilities,” he wrote on X. “Statements outside the agreed text do not help advance the negotiations.”

Iran suggested that the ongoing technical talks in Switzerland have led to the creation of specific negotiation groups, including those focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction, and monitoring, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

The report quoted Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister leading the technical talks, saying that the countries involved also formed a contact mechanism over ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz and over the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

It remains unclear whether the deconfliction cell being created will be enough to stop fighting between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israel, which occupies part of Lebanon and insists it must maintain a free hand to attack militants launching attacks into northern Israel.

Israeli forces opened fire and killed two men in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa on Tuesday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported, adding the pair were next to a bulldozer that was clearing the road at the time.

Separately, the agency said Israeli troops fired on residents on the outskirts of the town of Hadatha as they were heading to carry out a burial in the town’s ceremony with a Lebanese army escort.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Following the high-level talks in Switzerland, Vance had said if Iranian financial assets were unfrozen, they would be used to buy American-grown food.

Vance said that the U.S. and Qatar would have approval over the process, but if Iranian money becomes accessible as sanctions are lifted, it “would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”

However, Iran has no current demand for U.S. crops and Baghaei said on Tuesday that Tehran’s decisions on what to import would be based on “prices and quality.”

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said at the news conference in Tehran.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also questioned Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would have to approve how Iran uses unfrozen funds.

“Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

Mediators Pakistan and Qatar said the cell would include the Lebanese government and would “ensure the adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised new questions late on Monday, saying his military still has “full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the north.”

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah is a signatory to the U.S.-Iran deal, and Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until any threat to Israel is eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.

When asked about Netanyahu’s comments, U.S. President Donald Trump later said “we’re going to take a look at it,” adding that he wouldn’t say what action he would take but that the situation would “get solved.”

“I’m a problem solver, I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi,” he said, using a nickname for Netanyahu.

The reports of Tuesday's deadly violence in Lebanon came after two days of calm following a ceasefire brokered on Saturday. No Israeli airstrikes or shelling have been reported since Sunday, and Hezbollah also has not claimed any attacks in what has been the longest halt in the fighting since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war erupted on March 2.

Lebanon and Israel planned another round of direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, which are expected to focus on developing a plan for an Israeli withdrawal.

Rising reported from Bangkok and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Vehicles drives past welcoming billboards featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Shehbaz Sharif alongside an overhead bridge in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, center, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, right, and Shehbaz Sharif along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

The welcoming billboard, featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is displayed alongside of an overhead bridge, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

A woman walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

PARIS (AP) — Millions of people across France woke up drenched in sweat on Tuesday after another night of scorching heat, with most of the population exposed to extreme and exceptional temperatures, while 40 people died from drowning over the past five days in the country.

Temperatures will remain high around the clock as the national weather service, Meteo France, placed 54 departments under a red heat wave alert. That is about half of the country.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said after a crisis meeting that the 40 people who died by drowning since last Thursday were mainly young people.

In a country without widespread air conditioning, schools, trains and sporting events remain impacted.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records.

“Sunshine continues to dominate across France, maintaining oppressive and exhausting heat throughout the country,” Meteo France said. Extreme conditions are expected to last at least until the end of the week, with daytime highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many towns.

“Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” Meteo France said.

The heat wave is exceptionally intense, coming very early in the summer, “but with a still uncertain duration,” the weather service said. It has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave, when the highest temperatures in over half a century caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.

France introduced a heat watch warning system after that heat wave.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month. The above-average temperatures can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Across the English Channel, the Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June’s all-time daily temperature record could be broken.

Temperatures of around 37°C (98.6 F) are expected in southern England, with up to 35°C (95 F) in southeast Wales. The peak of the heat wave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when highs could reach at least 39°C (102.2 F). Conditions are expected to ease by Friday, the weather agency said.

The EU monitoring agency found that in Europe and globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record and the continent experienced its second-highest number of “heat stress” days.

Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, especially in southeastern Europe, making the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.

This story corrects the name of the body of water between France and the U.K. to the “English Channel.”

People cool off in a water spray at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A family walks through a cooling water spray at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sunday, June 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

A man shields himself from the sun with a scarf as he walks in the garden of the Palace of Versailles, outside Paris, during a heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tourists with an umbrella take a photo in Paris, as France is enduring a grueling heat wave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena )

A drugstore sign shows the temperature 43 degrees Celsius (109,4 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rennes, western France, Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)