Top U.S. diplomat Marco Rubio said on Tuesday (November 11, 2026) 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.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called for greater efforts to end the conflict, while warning of the economic damage of an ongoing impasse.
Hours after President Donald Trump said he saw “positive momentum” towards resolving the eight-month war, Mr/ 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. 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. “We need to move beyond the ‘no war, no peace’ stalemate, which is causing deep economic pain for our countries,” he said in Paris. Washington has appeared to taper down its threats of renewed strikes after the Republicans’ defeat, and even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who launched the war alongside Trump and recently lobbied to “forever eliminate the existential threat of Iran” — appeared to recognise the shifting diplomatic reality.
“That’s what I told our allies here today.
Iran’s demands have included ending the war on all fronts, unfreezing its assets, lifting oil sanctions and ending the US blockade of its ports.
“The conflict with Iran will not be resolved through military means, nor by intensifying sanctions,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the IRNA news agency.
“In the very near future, we’re going to be confronted by international pressure to accept a nuclear-armed Iran and the preservation of this terror regime that seeks to annihilate us,” he said on Tuesday (November 10, 2026).
