Iran’s 10-point plan takes center stage as Islamabad talks loom
Iran has submitted a 10-point plan that reads less like an opening offer and more like a comprehensive redrawing of regional order
ISLAMABAD (MNTV) — When delegations gather in Islamabad on Thursday for the first formal round of U.S.-Iran talks, they will find on the table a document that is anything but modest.
Iran’s National Security Council has submitted a 10-point plan that reads less like an opening offer and more like a comprehensive redrawing of the regional geopolitics.
The ceasefire brokered by Pakistan last Tuesday — which pulled the world back from the edge of a catastrophic military strike — was always understood to be a pause, not a resolution. These ten points are Tehran’s answer to what a resolution should actually look like.
Control of waters
Two of the plan’s provisions deal directly with the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows. Iran is not simply offering to reopen it — Tehran wants formal recognition of its authority over the passage.
Under the proposed framework, ships would transit the strait in coordination with Iranian armed forces, effectively institutionalizing Iranian dominance over one of the planet’s most strategically vital chokepoints.
‘Get out of region’
Perhaps the most confrontational demand is the call for a full withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from all military bases and deployment points across the region. Washington maintains dozens of installations spanning from the Gulf states to Iraq and beyond. Agreeing to this point would represent a fundamental reversal of decades of American military posture in the Middle East — something no U.S. administration has ever seriously entertained.
Tied closely to this is Tehran’s insistence that the war against what it calls the “axis of resistance” — its network of allied militant groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon — must end entirely.
Iran is demanding not just a ceasefire for itself, but a comprehensive halt to hostilities against its regional allies.
Financial reckoning
Three of the ten points concern money — and the sums involved are staggering. Iran is demanding the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions imposed over decades, the reversal of UN Security Council and Board of Governors resolutions, and the release of all Iranian assets frozen in accounts abroad.
On top of that, Tehran wants full financial compensation for damages sustained during the five weeks of war.
Taken together, these provisions would represent the most sweeping sanctions relief in modern diplomatic history.
Locking it in
Iran is not content with verbal assurances or even a bilateral agreement.
The final and perhaps most strategically calculated demand is that all of the above be codified in a binding UN Security Council resolution — a move that would make any future American administration’s attempt to walk back the deal legally and politically far more difficult.
It is a lesson drawn directly from the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, which unravelled when Trump withdrew from it in 2018. Tehran is determined not to be left exposed again.
Background: How it got here
The talks would not be happening at all without the intervention of Pakistan, which spent more than two weeks quietly mediating between Washington and Tehran.
The two countries share no direct diplomatic relations, and it was Islamabad’s unique position — representing Iranian interests in Washington while maintaining strong ties with the White House — that made the breakthrough possible.
The ceasefire announced last Tuesday came just 88 minutes before a US strike deadline, following a direct appeal by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir to President Trump.
Since February 28, when the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive began, more than 2,100 people have been killed. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices soaring globally, adding economic urgency to an already volatile crisis.
What happens next
Analysts are broadly skeptical that Iran’s full list of demands will survive contact with American negotiators. The troop withdrawal demand alone is likely to be a non-starter in Washington. The compensation clause will face fierce domestic political resistance. And convincing the UN Security Council — where the U.S. holds veto power — to pass a binding resolution enshrining Iranian gains is a near-impossible ask under current conditions.
Yet the very fact that these talks are happening in Islamabad, that a ceasefire is holding, and that both sides are at the table represents a remarkable turn from where things stood just one week ago.
The ten points may be a maximal opening bid. But they have set the terms of the conversation — and for now, that conversation is happening in Pakistan.
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