May 25 (UPI) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio tamped down expectations Monday for progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz after signaling a day earlier that he might have “good news” within hours.
Speaking to reporters at India’s Palam Air Base in New Delhi on Monday, the United States’ top diplomat said an agreement was “still a work in progress.”
“We thought we might have some news last night, maybe today,” he said, adding the holdup is that it takes time to hear back from the Iranians.
“I’m very confident — we should all be very confident — that we’re either going to have a good agreement or we’re going to have to deal with it another way. We’d prefer to have a good agreement.”
The United States is seeking to have Iran restore shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz before negotiations enter a subsequent phase focused on Iran’s nuclear program.
Rubio said what is on the table for opening the strait is “pretty solid,” but there is “a very real, significant time limit” to negotiations on the nuclear issue.
“Hopefully, we can pull it off,” he said.
Rubio is in India until Tuesday to discuss energy security, trade and defense cooperation with senior Indian officials. Meanwhile, U.S.-Iran negotiations have been ongoing through Pakistani and Qatari mediators.
After reporters that negotiations were edging toward completion, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson later Monday said that talks were focused on ending the war, with no discussions yet on its nuclear enrichment program, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The spokesperson also voiced skepticism over U.S. reliability, stating there is no guarantee Washington will hold up its end of the agreement once one is reached.
Speaking alongside Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at a joint press conference on Sunday, Rubio said that he believed more news about the agreement would come from President Donald Trump.
“But I do think perhaps there is the possibility that over the next few hours the world will get some good news, at least with regards to the straits,” he said.
The on-again, off-again negotiations have been conducted amid a fragile cease-fire called in April in the war that began in late February.
Trump has sought a new agreement to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon since 2018, when during his first administration he unilaterally withdrew the United States from a landmark Obama-era multinational nuclear accord called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Calling it “defective at its core,” Trump has criticized several aspects of the JCPOA, including its sunset provisions easing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.
Critics have rebutted his accusations, saying that not all aspects of the JCPOA were to expire and that the expiring provisions afforded time were intended to afford time for further diplomacy.