US special envoy Witkoff predicts Iran talks as war enters second month

People search for their belongings in a building damaged by a strike in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

Israeli army reported missiles fired by Iran at Israel on Friday evening.

Photo: AFP US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Friday he believed Iran would hold talks with Washington “this week” as the US-Israeli war against Tehran entered its second month.

The war began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched air strikes across Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and sending shock waves across the globe.

A month later the conflict showed no sign of ending, with US-Israeli strikes hitting two Iranian nuclear facilities on Friday and an Agence France-Presse journalist in Tehran reporting around 10 intense blasts and a plume of black smoke early on Saturday.

A brief military statement said Israeli forces were “currently striking Iranian terror regime targets across Tehran”, without elaborating.

The near-closure of the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz has sent markets into turmoil and pushed oil prices to levels not seen since the start of the war in Ukraine. “We think there will be meetings this week, we’re certainly hopeful for it,” Witkoff told a business forum in Miami.

Washington expected Tehran to respond to a 15-point US peace plan, he said. “It could solve it all.” US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff (left) during a business forum in Miami on Friday.

Photo: AFP The diplomatic hopes came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio left G7 talks in Paris to declare Washington expects its military campaign to prove victorious within weeks. “When we are done with them here in the next couple of weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history,” he told reporters.

Trump meanwhile reiterated his disappointment with Nato allies over their refusal to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, warning Washington might not help them if asked to do so. “Why would we be there for them if they’re not there for us?” he said.

Rubio said he had won G7 support to oppose Iran’s attempts to impose a toll on Strait of Hormuz shipping, a key sea lane for Gulf oil and gas exports. “Not only is this illegal, it’s unacceptable, it’s dangerous to the world, and it’s important that the world have a plan to confront it,” he said.

G7 foreign ministers expressed the “absolute necessity to permanently restore safe and toll-free freedom of navigation” in the waterway and called for “an immediate cessation of a

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