Rubio Sees Some Good Signs in Us-iran Agreement Talks
Marco Rubio said there are “some good signs” in the us-iran agreement talks as the United States and Iran kept negotiating over unresolved issues. The US secretary of state added that he did not want to be overly optimistic and said, “I don’t want to be overly optimistic … let’s see what happens over the next few days.”
Rubio’s cautious signal
Rubio’s remarks were the clearest public sign that Washington still sees movement in the renewed diplomacy, even as a senior Iranian official told that no deal had been reached. That official said the gaps had narrowed, but the sticking points still included Iran’s uranium enrichment and Tehran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Sina Azodi, an assistant professor of Middle East politics at The George Washington University, said the problem in Tehran is not just the substance of the talks but the pace and tone coming out of Washington. “If you’re sitting in Tehran, you’re not sure if the president is actually serious about getting a deal, because every day, every few hours, the president changes his position, threatens Iranians with a strike,” Azodi told Al Jazeera. “They can’t really decide whether the US actually wants to deal or it wants war.”
Trump administration signals
The broader setting remains a Trump administration that has sent broad and at times contradictory messages on Iran during renewed diplomacy. Azodi described that approach as “negotiation on air,” a phrase that captures why Iranian officials are still weighing whether the latest opening can hold long enough to produce an agreement.
Rubio’s comments matter because they land before any final deal has been announced and while the negotiations still hinge on the two issues most tied to leverage in the talks: uranium enrichment and the Strait of Hormuz. Those disputes keep the process in a narrow space between a diplomatic opening and a collapse back into open confrontation.
Hezbollah sanctions and Yemen support
Separate from the talks, the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions targeting nine individuals in Lebanon accused of aiding Hezbollah. Hezbollah called the sanctions “an American attempt to intimidate the free Lebanese people in order to support the Zionist aggression against our country” and said, “These sanctions are a badge of honour for those included in them, and further confirmation of the correctness of our choice”.
Hezbollah also called the sanctions “not worth the ink they were written with” and “a blatant attempt to intimidate our official security institutions and subject the state to the conditions of American guardianship”. The measures arrive before a meeting later this month between Pentagon officials and their Lebanese counterparts.
In Yemen, Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, said, “The American-Zionist aggression against Iran stems from the idea of removing a major obstacle in the way of the projects and conspiracies of the Zionist-American enemy.” He also said, “Today neutrality is treason because facilitating the enemy is considered the greatest treason,” and backed Iran’s right to control the Strait of Hormuz and prevent its use by adversaries.
The next concrete test for the diplomacy is whether the narrowing gaps that the senior Iranian official described can translate into a deal while the sides remain split on enrichment and Hormuz. Rubio’s warning against overreading the progress leaves the talks at a point where the next few days may decide whether the current opening becomes an agreement or just another pause.
