Rubio says US expects to finish Iran war ‘in next couple of weeks’. 12 hours ago. Paulin Kola. Reuters. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US expects to finish its operations in Iran “in the next couple of weeks”.. The objectives were being achieved and were ahead of schedule, he said at the end of a meeting in France of foreign ministers from the group of major Western economies, known the G7.. Referring to peace talks that President Donald Trump says Iran wants – which Tehran denies – Rubio said there had been messages, but it was unclear who was left to represent the country.. Several top Iranian leaders have been killed since the US and Israel began the war on 28 February. In the meantime, the US is sending troops to the area to give the president options, Rubio said.. Follow the latest updates. Trump and his top officials have consistently said their operations in Iran would last four-to-seven weeks.. As the fourth week is about to end, Rubio’s time frame would fit with those predictions – although he also mentioned that it was a question of “weeks, not months” when he answered a series of questions from reporters.. Trump is widely reported to have passed on to the Iranians – via Pakistan – an outline of a 15-point plan to end the war.. However, when asked by reporters if the Iranians were going to give their response on Friday, the US secretary of state said: “We haven’t gotten it yet. Look, we’ve got messages. We’ve had an exchange of messages and indications from the Iranian system, whatever’s left of it, about a willingness to talk about certain things.. “We’re waiting for further clarification about who was it that we would be talking to, what we would talking about, and when will we be talking.”. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff later said he was “hopeful” there would be meetings “this week”.. “We have a 15-point deal on the table that the Iranians have had for a bit of time. We expect an answer from them and it would solve it all,” Witkoff said.. Trump told reporters on Friday that he had paused a threatened attack on Iran’s power plants to give talks a chance.. “Iran is being decimated,” he said, adding: “We are talking now. They want to make a deal.”. On Friday, Iran said that Israel had carried out attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities as well as two of the country’s largest steel plants – prompting Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to threaten to exact a “heavy price”.. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s powerful military force that underpins the regime, said it would retaliate by targeting industrial infrastructure connected to the US or Israel.. In their statement after the talks, the G7 foreign ministers called for “the absolute necessity to permanently restore safe and toll free freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”, which Iran has closed in retaliation.. It was a reference to Iran’s threat to charge a fee, Rubio said.. There have been reports that IRGC has already been charging s
