By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met British foreign minister David Lammy on Thursday and held separate calls with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to discuss the war between U.S. ally Israel and its regional rival Iran.
KEY QUOTES
The U.S. State Department said that Rubio and the foreign ministers agreed that “Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.”
Lammy said the same on X while adding that the situation in the Middle East “remained perilous” and a “window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
The air war between Iran and Israel – which began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran – has raised alarms in a region that was already on edge since the start of Israel’s military assault on Gaza in October 2023.
President Donald Trump will decide in the next two weeks whether the U.S. will get involved in the war, the White House said on Thursday. Trump has kept the world guessing on his plans, veering from proposing a swift diplomatic solution to suggesting Washington might join the fighting on Israel’s side.
CONTEXT
Israel, which is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said it struck Iran to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, has retaliated with its own strikes on Israel.
Iran is a party to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while Israel is not.
Israeli air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, the Human Rights Activists News Agency says. Israel says at least two dozen Israeli civilians have died in Iranian attacks.
The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and the European Union were due to meet in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister on Friday to try to de-escalate the conflict.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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