WASHINGTON — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Friday that Iran has an “open window” for negotiations with the US — but “the clock is not on their side.”
“President Trump said it again yesterday, we have all the time in the world, and we’re not anxious for a deal, and I hear him say it every day in private as well,” Hegseth told a Pentagon news conference.
“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely — as we said previously — choose wisely at the negotiating table,” Hegseth said.
“All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways, or instead they can watch the regime’s fragile economic state collapse under the under unrelenting pressure of American power.
“The choice is theirs, but with this blockade, the clock is not on their side.”
The military chief spoke one day after Trump tried to flip the domestic narrative that he, rather than Iran, is facing a time crunch to make a deal.
The president said in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon that Iran faces a cataclysmic event if the US embargo of its ports continues, due to a quirk in Iranian oil infrastructure that makes it difficult to halt the flow of petroleum to Kharg Island, which processes about 90% of exports.
“If they don’t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode,” Trump told reporters.
“If they have to stop it … something happens underground that essentially renders it in very poor shape, and you never recover fully.”
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“They have a matter of days before that event takes place,” the president added. “So I’m not under any pressure whatsoever.”
The war, which began Feb. 28, has already blown past Trump’s original estimated four-week timeframe, but hostilities have largely ceased during a two-week, three-day cease-fire.
US officials say that they are awaiting Iran’s reply to the latest peace offer — after a team led by Vice President JD Vance left in-person negotiations in Pakistan without a deal on April 11.
The War Powers Resolution of 1973 says that Trump needs congressional approval to continue military action within 60 days of its commitment.
However, prior presidents have disregarded the deadline, with courts refusing to step in and deferring to Congress’s power to withhold funding.
