US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday voiced hope for working with elements within Iran's government, saying the United States privately had received positive messages.
Rubio said there were internal "fractures" inside the country and that the United States hopes figures with "power to deliver" take charge.
"We are hopeful that that's the case," Rubio told the ABC News program "Good Morning America."
"There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past, some of the things they're willing to do," he said.
Rubio nonetheless also denounced Tehran in broad strokes, insisting that the war aimed to end its nuclear weapons building capacity, which President Donald Trump said he accomplished during an attack last year.
"These people are lunatics. They are insane. They are religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future," Rubio said.
In a separate interview with Al Jazeera, Rubio said there were "messages and some direct talks going on between some inside of Iran and the United States."
The communication is "primarily through intermediaries, but there's been some conversation," he told the Qatar-based news channel.
"I think the president always prefers diplomacy."
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon and the UN nuclear watchdog has said no bomb was imminent.
Rubio's comments came a day after Trump said that Iran has already gone through "regime change," one month into the war launched by the United States and Israel.
Trump said that the United States was speaking to a "whole different group of people" and that they were "very reasonable."
On the first day of the war Israel assassinated Iran's longtime supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and subsequent strikes have killed other top leaders.
Rubio said that there was a difference between private and public messages coming from Iran.
"Obviously they're not going to put it out in press releases, and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn't necessarily reflect what they're saying in our conversations," Rubio said in the ABC interview.
Despite the Trump administration's public talk of diplomacy, the United States has been reinforcing its military presence in the region and Trump on Monday threatened to "blow up" Iran's oil-exporting island of Kharg if purported talks fail.
The comments from the administration signal a readiness to work with some form of the regime, after the United States and Israel at the start of the war spoke of toppling the government which weeks earlier killed thousands of people as it crushed mass protests.
