Rubio backs blockade, Vance wants deal: Is Trump’s team split on Iran war?

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Washington’s economic pressure campaign against Iran is proving so effective that a resumption of large-scale military operations is unnecessary.

His remarks are the latest in an often-evolving series of messages from US President Donald Trump’s administration on the conflict with Iran. They also come after a crushing midterm defeat for Trump’s Republican Party, which the president acknowledged was likely partly driven by public opposition to the war.

So how do Rubio’s latest remarks compare with the positions of other administration officials, and what do they say about the state of the conflict?

Rubio made his latest comments on Tuesday after meeting with foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) forum in Paris.

He said he told G7 allies that “the economic campaign [against Iran] is so devastating that right now there is no need for major combat operations”.

“We don’t need to conduct military strikes if we’re achieving the same objective through economic means and economic pressure. That’s not stalemate,” Rubio said.

“The economic pressure on Iran is going to get even worse,” he added.

Rubio also pushed G7 allies to help “protect shipping” around the embattled Strait of Hormuz, where he said US forces would stay.

The secretary of state’s remarks were largely in line with Trump’s comments on Monday, when the president said further strikes against Iran were “quite unlikely”.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the US’s Gulf allies preferred a continuation of the “status quo”, referring to the US’s blockade of Iranian ports. Trump added that there appears to be “positive momentum” towards ending the conflict, but that the US remains “locked and loaded” should circumstances change.

Vice President JD Vance, who has been more critical of the war and recently wrote a lengthy social media post blaming the Republican Party’s midterm defeat on the conflict, favours a deal with Iran, which Trump does not believe is possible right now, the Reuters news agency cited an informed source as saying.

Negotiations to end the US-Iran conflict have been largely stalled for months, as Iran continues to target vessels it claims are violating its conditions for transit through the Strait of Hormuz and the US ramps up sanctions against Iran and continues to blockade Iranian ports, with plans to block Iran’s land-based supply routes as well.

Back in September, Iran proposed a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restart talks. Tehran has since said that timeline could be brought down to two days. Tehran’s demands for the US include lifting sanctions Washington imposed after the collapse of a June memorandum of understanding (MoU), reducing the US military presence in the region, reinstating oil waivers and releasing frozen Iranian funds.

Trump, torn between restarting an unpopular war or pushing harder for a deal with Tehran, has for now settled on a middle ground: doubling down on the pressure campaign against Iran while avoiding a return to full-scale military action, according to officials quoted by Axios.

That strategy is backed by several key administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, as well as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Axios cited US officials as saying.

However, several US allies in the region, including Pakistan, Iraq and Turkiye, are concerned that a drawn-out US pressure campaign against Iran could hurt their own business interests, said one official cited by the news outlet.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that a long-term US policy of intensive sanctions and a blockade against Iran would only prolong an “unstable status quo” that would eventually escalate into more military confrontation.

However, he said one “walk-away” option for Trump could be to quietly relax the sanctions and blockade while maintaining them “on paper”.

In this case, “Trump walks away and claims to retain the blockade and sanctions infrastructure, but in reality, allows it to imperceptibly wither away,” Parsi told Al Jazeera. “The blockade begins to loosen, sanctions enforcement begins to decay, and slowly but surely, Asian and Middle Eastern countries begin trading with and investing in Iran.”

“A new equilibrium emerges in which sanctions enforcement is strong enough for the US to claim the restrictions are still in place, yet weak enough to prevent Tehran from challenging the new status quo,” Parsi said.

Negar Mortazavi, senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, said the Republicans’ resounding election defeat “dramatically raised the political cost of more escalation” and gave the Democrats a stronger mandate to challenge the war.

“If Democrats unite and use their new power aggressively, they can make it increasingly difficult for Trump to continue the war, pressuring him to end it,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

“A diplomatic breakthrough is not guaranteed, but the political and strategic costs of escalation keep growing, making another round of war less likely,” she added.

Both Trump and Vance have acknowledged that the Iran war was partly to blame for the Republicans’ loss, with Trump saying voters were not ready for petrol prices to rise.

According to a poll by Reuters/Ipsos completed on Monday, 71 percent of Americans – including 93 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans – favour congressional legislation that would halt the Iran war.

Iranian officials have upped their rhetoric even as Washington appears to be moving away from military escalation.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday said the war will “not end either through military means or by increasing sanctions”, but only through “using the language of respect”.

In comments carried by Iran’s IRNA news agency, he urged the US “to act on Iran’s demands and conditions”, adding that Trump “should have realised much earlier that he has not achieved, and will not achieve, any of his goals in the war with Iran”.

Iran’s top security chief Mohsen Rezaei, in a social media post on Monday, said the US government had been “wrecked” by the war and that it was time for it to “surrender” to Iran’s demands.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Tehran, noted that Iran’s language has become “more confident than ever before”.

“They’re trying to convey to the public, internally, and also to the Americans, that there is no way this war can be declared over without responding to those conditions presented by Iran during the negotiations,” said Vall.

The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday said that Doha is “working tirelessly” in its ongoing mediation efforts, and has received positive reactions from both sides.

Trump, the day before, after hosting Qatar’s prime minister at the White House, also spoke of “momentum towards the end of this conflict”, adding that “Iran is talking to us, and they’re talking very politely”.

Rubio, for his part, said the US remains “open to diplomacy”, but called Iran’s current demands “totally unrealistic”.

“We expect that could change – and if it does, we’re prepared for diplomacy,” he said.

Iranian officials, meanwhile, have appeared more sceptical of the latest reports of mediation, insisting that the US must accept their demands.

Rezaei on Tuesday said there ⁠were no negotiations taking place between Tehran and Washington and that Iran would retaliate against any new US attack by targeting US bases “far away”. He also said Iran would not let any of its enriched nuclear material leave the country, ruling out a concession the US has sought in potential nuclear talks.

In a social media post, Rezaei went on to accuse the US of “manufacturing FAKE NEWS about imaginary talks”.