US could strike Iran this weekend, envoy says

JUST IN: US could strike Iran this weekend, US envoy says, as diplomacy with Washington teeters on collapse.

The United States could strike Iran this weekend. That is from Washington's own envoy, not a leak, not an anonymous official.

The warning comes as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran teeters on collapse. Talks that were supposed to pull both sides back from confrontation are, by the envoy's own account, close to failing, and the military option is now being spoken about with a date attached.

Tehran has not folded. Iranian officials, seen here at a recent gathering, have given no public sign of a last-minute concession that might change the calculus in Washington.

So the window is brutally short. If the diplomats cannot find a way through in the next forty-eight hours, the decision passes from the negotiating table to the Pentagon. A strike this weekend would end the talks entirely, and nobody on either side is pretending otherwise.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.