Iran US Talks Today: What Did Ghalibaf Tell Washington?

Iran’s chief negotiator answered Washington on Wednesday 11 November. “The ball is now in the Americans’ court, and they must make a decision and announce it,” Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a television interview. He said Iran had sent the United States “a clear and transparent response” setting out its demands, and that “Washington has not yet provided an official and specific response to our letter.”

So the Iran US talks today stand where both capitals have put them: each side says the next move belongs to the other. A day earlier in Paris, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said the blockade and sanctions made major combat unnecessary and that Iran’s terms were “absurd”. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi answered him on X on Wednesday, and President Masoud Pezeshkian took Iran’s war damage to the UN climate summit in Antalya the same afternoon.

Rubio’s remarks and Tehran’s first denials of any talks were covered in Iran US Talks Update: Why Rubio Says No Major Combat Now, and the dated record is on the Iran US talks tracker.

• Ghalibaf said Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz or resume negotiations until Washington meets its seven conditions, and that the strait “will not return to what it was before the war.”
• He said Iran has reached an understanding with Oman on the shipping corridor and traffic separation scheme in the strait, and that Washington asked Vladimir Putin to arrange direct talks.
• Araghchi called Rubio’s sanctions argument “drivel” and said “delusions” are producing failed US policy.
• Rubio’s own words on 10 November were that the pressure on Iran will grow and that there will be no “pallets of cash”.

Ghalibaf, who met Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad in April, set the order of steps: “Washington must meet our seven conditions to open the Strait of Hormuz and resume negotiations,” he said. “Our priority is peace if they accept our conditions, and we do not want the war to continue.”

“What is preventing an agreement is our lack of trust in Washington and its efforts to impose excessive demands,” he said, adding that a deal can be reached if Washington “sticks to what was agreed upon.”

On the Strait of Hormuz, he said: “We have reached an understanding with Oman on the shipping corridor and traffic separation scheme in the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, and its status “will not return to what it was before the war.” Oman had published no such understanding by Wednesday evening.

“The Americans visited Moscow and asked Putin to speak with Iran to arrange direct negotiations between us,” Ghalibaf said. Neither the Kremlin nor the White House has confirmed that request.

“If America or Israel starts a war, we will confront them together and respond to any attack,” he said, and “There has been no change in the negotiating team, and I remain in charge of the negotiations.”

Rubio had told reporters in Paris on 10 November that “there’s really no need for major combat operations any longer.” He described an Iranian economy “that, every month, continues to collapse,” and said: “Eventually you have to eat; eventually you have to be able to pay your own fighters.”

Araghchi wrote on X on Wednesday: “Eight years ago, a cartoon character like Pompeo said Iranians must follow White House diktat ‘if they want to eat’. Today, Rubio, whose fellow Cubans are victims of the same policy, repeats that drivel. Forget about the inhumanity. It’s the delusions that are producing failed US policy,” he wrote, recalling Mike Pompeo, secretary of state in 2018, when Washington left the nuclear deal and restored oil sanctions.

Ghalibaf put the same complaint in plainer words: “Washington has imposed a blockade on us, preventing food from reaching us and obstructing trade and health services.”

Pezeshkian told the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye, on Wednesday that US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s fuel facilities released about 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by his government’s count, 500,000 tonnes of it at Asaluyeh and about a million tonnes from fuel tanks near Tehran. He asked international bodies to document the environmental damage and to set up mechanisms for compensation.

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on 10 November, called for an immediate end to all threats to navigation in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab and Hormuz. With Hormuz shut, its oil leaves through the Red Sea, and the Saudi-led coalition said on Wednesday that it destroyed three Houthi cruise missiles aimed at the Riyadh region.

Watch for a written US reply, and whether Qatar carries it as it carried Iran’s plan, and whether Oman confirms or denies an understanding on the traffic separation scheme. Watch whether the Kremlin says anything about Iran when Putin next meets the US envoys. And watch the oil still at sea, the clock Rubio says he is running. On Wednesday’s words, neither side has moved: Tehran says the next step is Washington’s, and Rubio says “the economic pressure is going to get even worse.”