US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that negotiating a deal with Iran could 'take a few days', dampening hopes for an imminent breakthrough a day after American forces conducted what Washington described as defensive strikes in southern Iran — even as diplomats on both sides remained at the table.
Speaking to reporters aboard his plane in Jaipur, Rubio was blunt about the stakes, saying the US will either reach a good agreement with Tehran or deal with the country 'another way'.
He added that Washington would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before exploring what he called the "alternatives" — a thinly veiled warning that military options remain on the table.
Rubio also zeroed in on the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway whose closure has roiled global energy markets since hostilities erupted in February.
"The straits have to be open, they're going to be open one way or the other, so they need to be open," he told reporters. Describing Monday's U.S. strikes against Iranian boats attempting to lay mines and missile launch sites, Rubio said the strait simply had to be open — "one way or the other."
Despite a ceasefire in place since early April, U.S. Central Command said Monday it had carried out fresh strikes "to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces." Iran, for its part, said it had downed a "hostile" stealth drone using a new air defence system, Iranian news agencies reported, without specifying where the drone had originated.
Rubio acknowledged there was "a pretty solid thing on the table," citing progress on opening the strait and advancing a "time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter."
"Hopefully we can pull it off," he said.
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Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday said he expected Iran to hand over its enriched uranium -- a key sticking point in efforts to end the war in the Middle East -- to the United States to be destroyed or have it destroyed in Iran with an international witness.
"The Enriched Uranium (Nuclear Dust!) will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location, with the Atomic Energy Commission, or its equivalent, being witness to this process and event," he said in a social media post.
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