Mike Waltz, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with the Financial Times that Washington can continue a blockade of Iranian ports for a long time and that the Donald Trump administration is intensifying economic pressure on the Islamic Republic.

In response to the possibility of the deadlock between Tehran and Washington continuing until next year, without reaching a nuclear deal or resuming navigation in the Strait of Hormuz to the pre-war situation, he said: “I don’t want to talk about hypothetical scenarios. We hope that they come to the negotiating table in a serious and meaningful way before then.”

He added: “The president and the U.S. Navy can sustain this blockade into the foreseeable future.”

The U.S. ambassador to the UN emphasized that Washington will not achieve its strategic objectives in the war until highly enriched Iranian nuclear materials are eliminated and it reaches a “meaningful agreement” on uranium enrichment inside Iran.

In another part of the interview, he said the United States is cutting the budgets of UN bodies to implement reforms and called for an end to long-term peacekeeping missions in Lebanon, Somalia, and the Western Sahara. http