Pakistan will host talks next week with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey on the war in the Middle East, a senior foreign ministry official told AFP.
"We will host a quadrilateral meeting on Monday," the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that the exact representation was not yet confirmed.
Delegations are expected to arrive in Pakistan by tomorrow evening, the official added.
Pakistan has emerged as a key facilitator between Iran and the United States as the conflict drags on, serving as an intermediary for messages between the two sides.
Islamabad has longstanding links with Tehran and close contacts in the Gulf, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Amin Munir have struck up a personal rapport with US President Donald Trump.
Ankara's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told the private A Haber broadcaster that the meeting was initially planned to be held in Turkey.
"However, since our Pakistani counterparts are required to remain in their country, we moved the meeting to Pakistan," he said late yesterday.
"It is possible that we will meet there this weekend," he added.
Mr Fidan had said the talks would involve the foreign ministers of the four Muslim-majority countries.
Earlier yesterday, Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said he expected a direct US-Iran meeting in Pakistan "very soon", without revealing his source.
While Tehran has refused to admit to holding official talks with Washington, Iran has passed a response to US President Donald Trump's 15-point plan to end the war via Islamabad, according to an anonymous source cited by the Iranian Tasnim press agency.
Rubio says Iran war to last 'weeks not months'
The US expects its military operations against Iran to conclude within weeks, not months, and Washington can meet all its objectives without using ground troops, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.
Meanwhile, an Iranian attack on an airbase in Saudi Arabia seriously wounded two US military personnel and injured another 10, a US official told Reuters, as drones and missiles continued to strike around the Gulf.
Mr Rubio told reporters after meeting G7 counterparts in France that Washington was "on or ahead of schedule in that operation and expect to conclude it at the appropriate time here - a matter of weeks, not months."
While he said the US could achieve its aims without ground troops, he acknowledged it was deploying some to the region "to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity to adjust the contingencies, should they emerge."
Mr Rubio discussed with G7 foreign ministers the possibility that Iran, even after the conflict ends, could try to impose shipping tolls through the Strait of Hormuz.
He said European and Asian countries that benefit from trade through the waterway should contribute to efforts to secure free passage, downplaying US dependence on the trade.
Marines en route
Washington has dispatched two contingents of thousands of Marines to the region, the first of which is due to arrive around the end of March aboard a huge amphibious assault ship.
The Pentagon is also expected to deploy thousands of elite airborne soldiers.
The deployments have raised concerns that the war, which the US and Israel launched on 28 February with airstrikes that killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials, could turn into a prolonged ground battle.
Iran's response, striking US and Israeli targets in the region as well as civilian targets in Gulf Arab nations and shipping, has disrupted global trade in energy and other commodities, raising fears of rising prices and recession.
US President Donald Trump has appeared anxious to wind down the unpopular war, and emphasized this week what he has described as productive negotiations aimed at a diplomatic solution, despite repeated assertions from Tehran that no such talks have begun.
On Thursday, Mr Trump extended a deadline by 10 days for Iran to reopen the blockaded Strait of Hormuz or face attacks against its civilian energy grid.
Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US was hopeful of meetings with Iran within a week and that he expects an Iranian response soon to Mr Trump's 15-point proposal to end the war.
Mr Witkoff said there were clear red lines for the US, including no uranium enrichment by Iran and the country giving up what he said was 10,000 kilograms of enriched stockpiled material.
New strikes on Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia
Iranian media reported strikes on Iran's decommissioned heavy-water nuclear research reactor and a factory producing yellowcake uranium late yesterday, and said there were no radiation leaks or danger arising from either attack.
Iran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency there was no increase in off-site radiation levels at the yellowcake facility, the IAEA said on X, adding that it would look into the report.
There were also reports of an attack on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Iranian media said left no casualties or extensive damage.
At least five people were killed and seven were injured after a US-Israeli attack on a residential unit in Iran's northwestern city of Zanjan, Iranian media reported this morning.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on X that Israel, in coordination with the US, had also hit two steel factories and a power plant.
"Attack contradicts POTUS extended deadline for diplomacy. Iran will exact HEAVY price for Israeli crimes," Mr Araqchi said, using an acronym for the US president.
A senior Iranian told Reuters that Tehran had not decided whether to respond to the proposal the US sent this week after attacks on industrial and nuclear infrastructure yesterday.
The official said Iran had expected its response to be delivered on yesterday or today, but said the continuing strikes while the US was seeking talks were "intolerable."
The US proposal, sent via Pakistan two days ago, is reported to include demands ranging from dismantling Iran's nuclear and missile programmes to relinquishing control of the world's most important trade route for energy supplies.
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The war has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands of people and causing the biggest disruption ever to energy supplies, hitting the global economy with soaring oil, gas and fertiliser prices that have fuelled inflation fears.
In Iran, more than 1,900 people have been killed and at least 20,000 injured, said Maria Martinez of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Attacks on Israel by Iran's Lebanese ally Hezbollah have also prompted an Israeli onslaught that has displaced a fifth of Lebanon's population.
The Israeli military said yesterday evening that Iran had launched missiles towards Israel.
A 60-year-old man was killed in the Tel Aviv area, the ambulance service said.
Twelve US military personnel were wounded - including two seriously - by an Iranian missile and drone attack at the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia, a US official told Reuters.
The Wall Street Journal reported that several refuelling aircraft were damaged in the attack.
The latest casualties add to the more than 300 US military service members who have been wounded since the start of the conflict. Earlier yesterday, the US military said 273 of them had already returned to duty.
Thirteen US troops have been killed in the conflict.
Israel says it identified launch of missile from Yemen
Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said they were ready to intervene militarily under certain conditions, including if new allies join the United States and Israel in their war against Iran or if the Red Sea is used to launch attacks on Iran.
The Israeli military said it had identified a launch of a missile from Yemen, the first time a missile has launched from there since the war erupted.
The launch comes hours after Iran-aligned Houthis said they were prepared to act if what the group called an escalation against Iran and the "axis of resistance" continued, but did not say what form any intervention would take.
The Houthis entry to the war raises the prospects of a broader regional confrontation, particularly given the Houthis' ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, which they had done in support of Hamas in Gaza after the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.
Iran's Shia allies in Lebanon and Iraq have already joined the war in the region triggered by US and Israeli strikes on Tehran four weeks ago.
Iran still possesses missiles
The US, which has set out to neutralise Iran's long-range strike capabilities, can only confirm that about a third of the country's missile arsenal has been destroyed, five people familiar with the US intelligence told Reuters.
As the damage mounts and with no end in sight, Gulf Arab states are telling the US that any deal must not merely end the war but also permanently curb Iran's missile and drone capabilities and ensure global energy supplies are never again weaponised, four Gulf sources said.
Stock markets fell yesterday while the Brent crude oil benchmark LCOc1 topped $112, having risen more than 50% since the war began.
In the US, where Mr Trump is politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices, diesel in California hit an all-time high at an average $7.17 a gallon, the American Automobile Association said.
Israel strikes towns, villages across southern Lebanon
Israel carried out dawn airstrikes on several towns in southern Lebanon, Lebanese state media reported, as Israel and Hezbollah said they continued to target each other's forces.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported "a series of strikes" at dawn on the town of Majdal Selm and "successive strikes" on the towns of Kafra, Hanniyeh, Touline and Adloun.
It added that several Israeli strikes also targeted the city of Nabatiyeh, hitting "residential and commercial buildings and a fuel station".
At the same time, the agency reported strikes on border towns, particularly Taybeh, along with "an attempt by enemy forces to advance toward the Litani area".
The Israeli military said this morning that "at this time, the IDF continues to strike Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure across Lebanon".
It also reported having hit dozens of Hezbollah sites overnight and said it killed two senior members of Hezbollah's communications unit in a strike on Beirut yesterday.
"Overnight, the IDF conducted strikes on dozens of targets from the air and sea across multiple areas in southern Lebanon, in support of ground troops and as part of the ongoing effort to degrade the capabilities of Hezbollah in the area."
For its part, Hezbollah said in a series of statements that it had targeted gatherings of Israeli forces in Debel, a predominantly Christian border town with some remaining residents despite the war.
The group said it struck a Merkava tank "with an attack drone" in Debel.
And it said that "after monitoring an Israeli enemy force positioned in a house in Debel, its fighters targeted it with an attack drone".
Hezbollah also announced it targeted the Israeli military's Northern Command headquarters, north of the city of Safed in northern Israel, with a volley of rockets.