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Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on lawmakers while testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explaining the American position on negotiating with Iran amid an ongoing ceasefire.
“No one’s begging for anything here,” Rubio said, responding to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who suggested America was “begging to get back into a deal that you all trashed in the first place.”
Operation Epic Fury was launched against Iran in February. The U.S. and Iran have been locked in a tenuous ceasefire since early April, as negotiations have continued to grind forward, amid difficult talks with the Iranian regime.
“The Iranians might be begging,” Rubio continued, “because their economy is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a day…understand, Iran had street protests going on before all of this started. All of those economic factors in Iran are far worse today than they were six months ago when those protests were happening. They have hyperinflation, their currency’s completely devalued, they’re struggling to make payroll for their government workers – Iran is in a very serious situation.”
The ceasefire between Iran and the United States remains fragile. Just this week, the U.S. Central Command confirmed that it intercepted Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at American forces in Kuwait. Israel and Lebanon have also been locked in an increasingly hostile conflict, with President Trump intervening to attempt to stem the bloodshed, calling both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Hezbollah on the phone this week, respectively, RSBN reported Monday.
The president has often commented on the ongoing negotiations with the Iranians. Still, progress has proven difficult, as the Strait of Hormuz remains threatened and the free flow of oil and energy continues to be squeezed.
“If it was up to the political class there – and I understand everybody there is sort of radical in some way – but if was up to the people that actually, like, go to elections and wear the suits [that] you see on TV, they’d probably make a deal tomorrow,” Rubio told lawmakers on Tuesday. “The issue they’re facing is that the Supreme Leader in the IRGC core are little bit more immune from those pressures until they can be convinced otherwise, and I think that’s the direction that they’re moving in.”
Rubio said that Iranian military capabilities had been significantly reduced in this conflict, noting the destruction of their Navy, and a “substantial percentage of their defense industrial base,” along with the collapse of the Iranian economy.
“They are looking at hundreds of billions of reconstruction costs just to get to where they were six months ago,” he stated.