Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that U.S. negotiators had tried to jump start diplomacy with Iran on its nuclear program through talks on the side of a United Nations summit the previous day.
The flurry of diplomacy came as Iran’s partners, the Houthis, pressed forward with their offensive in the region, as a second front widened in a conflict that began when the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February.
Mr. Rubio said that the Americans involved in the talks, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were carrying out President Trump’s orders to continue a dialogue with Iran that prioritized persuading the country to end nuclear development involving enriching uranium.
Mr. Rubio added that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, which occurred as a result of the war, must also be addressed.
Mr. Witkoff is a special envoy for Mr. Trump, while Mr. Kushner is a businessman who is the president’s son-in-law and has no government position.
“If there’s an opportunity to exchange ideas and messages, we will,” Mr. Rubio told reporters in a news conference at a hotel in New York. “And that’s what largely yesterday was. It was positive in that regard.”
But ultimately, he said, “I don’t want to mischaracterize this as a major breakthrough. But at the same time, I think it was significant that at least there was a conversation.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump threatened to “annihilate the Islamic republic” if a deal to end the war was not reached.
The hourslong meeting between Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner on one side and Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, on the other was mediated by Qatar, which has often acted as an interlocutor among the hostile parties.
Mr. Rubio said the information he has received about on the meeting is that “basically it was a continuation of conversations that have occurred in the past with people involved in those conversations.”
Mr. Rubio expressed skepticism that some of Iran’s hard-line leaders, ones who embrace the legacy of revolution, as he put it, would commit to deals that negotiators reached with the Americans.
An arm of Iran’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, consolidated power after a top tier of the country’s leadership was killed in an initial strike in the war. That military unit sees itself as a guardian of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.
“The ultimate decision making in Iran lies in the hands of people that are strong believers in Iran the revolution,” Mr. Rubio said. “And that makes interactions problematic.”
On Wednesday, the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, who is also in New York, said Iran laid out its conditions for reviving diplomacy, which included ending a U.S. naval blockade, releasing the country’s frozen assets and ending hostilities on all fronts.
Those demands were enshrined in a 14-point peace agreement that the United States and Iran signed in June, a document commonly called a memorandum of understanding. The agreement eroded after Iranian hard-liners attacked commercial ships crossing the Strait for Hormuz. The U.S. military has been trying to ensure that ships can safely cross the waterway along its southern half, which is nearer to Oman than to Iran.
Mr. Rubio reiterated that Iran had violated the agreement. Mr. Trump has backed away from it and said he wants a more robust deal.
“What the meeting didn’t produce is a way to bridge the gap between two sides that believe they have more leverage than, and can outlast, the other” said Robert Malley, who was a top Iran negotiator in the Obama and Biden administrations.
The Houthi offensive in the region, to counter Saudi Arabia, has created a bigger crisis. The Yemeni group has seized control of another crucial waterway for international commercial shipping, the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The Houthis control most of Yemen and have armed insurgent units that withstood years of attacks by a Saudi-led military force starting in 2015, and also endured a U.S. bombing campaign last year.
Officials in the region fear that Iran could try to persuade the Houthis to further restrict commercial shipping in that waterway, which would add to the turmoil in the global economy. The U.S.-Israeli war has already sent the price of crude oil soaring, and consumers around the world have been complaining.
On Wednesday, in a speech at the United Nations, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, vowed to defy the United States, but also expressed openness to negotiations.
“Iran must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force,” he said.
When a reporter asked whether Mr. Trump might seek help from Xi Jinping, the leader of China, during a state visit in Washington this week to get Iran to agree to a settlement to the war, Mr. Rubio said, “I think the president will raise every relevant topic that involves the world.” He declined to discuss further details of the planned talks
Mr. Rubio was also asked why Mr. Trump did not just declare victory and walk away from the war now that the U.S. military had managed to seal off Iranian nuclear sites with rubble by bombing those sites in June 2025.
“Because at the end of the day you have to have not simply the destruction of facilities, you have to have a long-term and enforceable commitment to never pursue a nuclear weapon, ever,” Mr. Rubio said. “As long as they’re governed by the people they have now, that’s an unacceptable risk to the world.”
Michael Crowley and Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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