Iran and the United States played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough in efforts to end their three-month-old war on Monday, with the top US diplomat saying Washington will either get a good agreement or deal with the country in “another way.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in New Delhi that the US would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before exploring “alternatives,” after President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had told his representatives not to rush into any Iran deal.
There was a “pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait, get the strait (of Hormuz) open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off,” Rubio said.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in a weekly briefing on Monday that a conclusion had been reached on many topics, but that does not mean that “we’re close to signing an agreement.”