Rubio says Iran ready to discuss nuclear deal as Tehran declares peace talks over

Iran has agreed to negotiate aspects of its nuclear program that it had refused to discuss even a month ago, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio , has claimed, even as Tehran announced it was halting peace talks and moving to fully close the strait of Hormuz. Appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee for the first time since the Trump administration launched the war against Iran – which was pitched as a short, weeks-long war, in February – Rubio repeated the Trump administration’s claims that a deal was within reach. He arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the morning after Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that Tehran would stop exchanging messages with Washington through intermediaries, pointing to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon as a ceasefire violation. Donald Trump later claimed conversations “have been going on continuously” and insisted it was false to suggest officials had stopped speaking. And Rubio insisted progress could be made soon. “There is the prospect before us, which could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week – that for the first time, certainly in my memory, they have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that just a month ago” they said they would not, he told senators. …