Iran's Security Chief Gives US a Four to Five Day Deadline on Hormuz as Rubio Shuts Down 'Breakthrough' Talk

Since the US and Iran began discussing a phased reopening of the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week, Tehran has attached a hard clock to the offer. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Iranian TV on Wednesday evening that Washington has "four or five days" to meet all seven of Iran's preconditions, all at once, or the strait stays shut and diplomacy stops entirely, according to The Guardian.

"Talk is enough. Negotiations are enough. Now we must act," Rezaei said. He said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi flew to New York for the UN General Assembly to deliver Iran's terms, not to negotiate new ones. "There has been no discussion whatsoever that these conditions should change," he said.

Those seven conditions, laid out by Araghchi through Qatari mediators, include lifting US sanctions on Iranian oil exports, ending Israeli military activity in Lebanon, and releasing frozen Iranian assets, per The Guardian's reporting. Araghchi has framed this as simply speeding up the timeline already agreed to in the Islamabad memorandum of understanding Trump signed with Iran in June, which called for nuclear talks to start 60 days after implementation begins.

Rubio pumps the brakes

Special envoy Steve Witkoff posted on X that he held "lengthy talks" with the Iranian delegation on the sidelines of the UN gathering Tuesday and "successfully completed a round of discussions," adding that mediators would keep working. Fox News led with that framing, reporting Trump says a deal is nearing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on that read. He said it would be wrong to characterize the Witkoff-Araghchi talks as a major breakthrough, according to The Guardian. European diplomats present in New York told the paper they have not sensed a US-Iran breakthrough either. Fox News's own coverage did not mention Rezaei's deadline or Rubio's caveat at all, focusing instead on Trump's optimism and Iran's aviation isolation.

A second front warning

Iran's hardliners are not just setting deadlines. Maj Gen Rahim Safavi, a senior Iranian military figure, warned that if the US launches new military action, "a new front centred on the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait may open before their eyes," a reference to the Houthi-controlled waterway near Yemen, as reported by The Guardian and Archyde.

That threat lands alongside Brent crude trading around $107 a barrel on Thursday, up from the roughly $106 level reported in earlier coverage this week.

Miliband's first meeting with Araghchi in a year

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband met Araghchi for the first time Thursday in New York, the first UK-Iran ministerial contact in a year and the first since Britain proscribed the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization in July, according to The Guardian and Archyde. Miliband told Araghchi the UK is committed to freedom of navigation in the strait and backs Saudi Arabia. He also raised Iranian threats against Jewish communities in the UK and pressed for consular access to a British couple serving 10-year prison sentences in Tehran.

Separately, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iranian airlines are now effectively shut out of international operations as of September 23, with foreign carriers including Azerbaijan Airlines and Turkish Airlines halting or restricting flights to Iranian hubs under threat of secondary US sanctions, Fox News reported.

What's actually contested here

Iran's position, that it's only asking the US to implement what Trump already signed onto in June, is a legitimate characterization of the Islamabad MOU's terms, and Araghchi has said publicly he wants a deal before the US midterms to help ease energy prices. But Rezaei's ultimatum reads differently: it demands the US act first, with no room to negotiate the conditions themselves, and gives Washington a fixed window measured in days rather than weeks.

Whether that reflects Tehran's unified position or a hardline faction inside Iran's security establishment pressing for confrontation over Pezeshkian and Araghchi's more conciliatory line is not resolved by any source here. Rezaei's own framing, that diplomats flew to New York merely to deliver terms rather than negotiate, suggests an internal Iranian tension between the diplomatic and security tracks that outside observers cannot fully verify.

Rezaei did not specify what Iran's "next step" would be if the deadline passes without a US response. Saudi Arabia, which had reportedly been expected to endorse an Oman-brokered Hormuz route last week, pulled back over anger at Houthi attacks tied to the Yemen dispute, according to The Guardian, leaving the fate of the entire arrangement dependent on a country that isn't even named in Rezaei's ultimatum.