Washington
\nUnited States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Washington was close to achieving its objectives in Iran \u201cin a matter of weeks\u201d, adding that President Donald Trump had \u201ca number of options available\u201d to prevent Iran from controlling the Strait of Hormuz.
\nDuring an interview with ABC News, Rubio said that the US was focused on the \u201cdestruction\u201d of Iran\u2019s air force, navy and factories where they make all their weapons, as well as the substantial reduction in the number of missiles they possess.
\n\u201cAll of those objectives are being met, on or ahead of schedule and should be able to achieve in a matter of weeks,\u201d he said.
\nOn the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Rubio said Trump had \u201ca number of options available\u201d to prevent Iran from imposing control or a tolling system on the vital waterway.
\n\u201cThe president has a number of options available to him if he so chooses to prevent that from happening. \u2026 Obviously, I\u2019m not going to discuss what those options are, and we\u2019re not going to discuss military tactics,\u201d he added.
\nHe separately stated that Trump \u201calways prefers diplomacy and always prefers to reach a result\u201d regarding the war against Iran.
\n\u201cThere are direct messages and talks taking place between parties inside Iran and the United States, primarily through intermediaries,\u201d Rubio said, according to a preview of an exclusive interview published on Al Jazeera\u2019s website.
\n\u201cThe Iranian regime has chosen to spend its country\u2019s wealth to support Hezbollah, Hamas and Shia militias inside Iraq and to needlessly threaten its neighbours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Washington was close to achieving its objectives in Iran \u201cin a matter of weeks\u201d, adding that President Donald Trump had \u201ca number of options available\u201d to prevent Iran from controlling the Strait of Hormuz. During an interview with ABC News, Rubio said that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95670,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95656\/revisions\/95670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}