TEHRAN: Top US diplomat Marco Rubio said Tuesday that he saw no need to attack Iran again, as diplomatic efforts to end the war gathered steam and Tehran urged Washington to accept its demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Hours after President Donald Trump said he saw “positive momentum” toward resolving the eight-month war, Rubio said the United States’ squeezing of Iran’s economy made further attacks unnecessary.
“The economic campaign (against Iran) is so devastating that right now there is no need for major combat operations,” the secretary of state said after a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Paris. “That’s what I told our allies here today.”
Iran’s efforts to blockade Hormuz, the major exit route for Gulf energy shipments, have sent oil prices soaring — a major factor in the humbling of Trump’s Republicans in last week’s midterm elections.
Washington has imposed a counter-blockade on Iranian ports and in August announced what it called an “economic asphyxiation” campaign aimed at financially strangling Iran, already battered by years of sanctions.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called for greater efforts to end the conflict, while warning of the economic damage of an ongoing impasse.
“We need to move beyond the ‘no war, no peace’ stalemate, which is causing deep economic pain for our countries,” he said in Paris.
