WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says there is no need for further US military action against Iran because the economic pain Washington is inflicting on the country is so great.
“Right now, frankly, the economic pain that we are inflicting on that regime is so great that there’s no need for military action because we’ve weakened them so much,” Rubio said on Friday. “But I think victory is ensuring that they never have a nuclear weapon.”
He was answering a student’s question about what an American victory in the Iran war would look like, after delivering the keynote lecture at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington.
His remarks follow President Donald Trump’s statement earlier in the week that the war “militarily is effectively over”.
‘No war is popular’
Rubio acknowledged the cost of the war to Americans, which has pushed up fuel prices and touched almost every part of the global economy. “Believe me, no war is popular. No military conflict is popular,” he said.
It would have been easy, he said, for Trump to leave Iran’s nuclear programme “for the next person to worry about”, but the president had decided he was not going to leave it unaddressed. “But it’s hard. It’s not easy, and it’s difficult, and oftentimes it inflicts pain, economic pain and otherwise. So we recognise that,” he said.
Victory, Rubio said, meant Iran could never have a nuclear weapon “one way or the other”, whether because it lacked the money or the equipment to build one.
Hormuz and the Houthis
Rubio pointed to Iran’s attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, saying that 13 to 14 million barrels of oil were still getting out despite them. “Imagine if they had a nuclear weapon. They would hold the entire region hostage,” he said.
He blamed Iran’s clerical leadership for the region’s major conflicts, naming the Houthis’ attacks on Saudi Arabia, Shia armed groups in Iraq, the war in Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. “Everywhere you turn, there’s one common denominator,” he said.
The International Maritime Organization says October brought the highest number of incidents against commercial ships in the region since the war began in February. As of 11 November it had counted some 134 incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider Middle East, in which 25 seafarers died. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Friday that another tanker had hit a mine in the strait, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Drones over Bahrain
Rubio spoke on the day the US military said it had shot down two Iranian attack drones heading for Bahrain, rejecting Iran’s claim that it had destroyed a US radar there. US Central Command said there were no injuries or damage.
Iran has also told the International Atomic Energy Agency that talks on nuclear inspections cannot go ahead while it faces military threats. At the UN Security Council on Friday, Iran’s deputy ambassador warned that any renewed fighting would draw a “decisive response”, as Pakistan called for an end to attacks in the Gulf.
In the same speech Rubio attacked the International Criminal Court, calling it “fake and illegitimate”, on the day the court made public its judges’ decision to drop US troops from its Afghanistan investigation.
