Iran “tried to play” President Donald Trump, which led to U.S. strikes on three of Tehran’s nuclear facilities this weekend,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday.
Rubio told anchor Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that Trump sent a letter months ago to Iran emphasizing how the regime would not be allowed to have nuclear weapons and that he wanted negotiations to achieve a peaceful resolution. But, he emphasized, that did not happen.
“They tried to play him along the way they’ve played every American president for the last 35 years and the president told them, ‘If we don’t get a deal’ — which is what we wanted — ‘then I’ll have to handle it differently.’ And that’s what he did last night. He handled it differently,” Rubio said. “But that was an Iranian choice. We didn’t make that choice. They did by playing games with Donald Trump, they made a huge mistake.”
Rubio declared that the world now is “safer” and “more stable” than it was 24 hours ago, prior to the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“And a bunch of these countries, putting out statements condemning us — privately, they all agree with us — that this needed to be done. They got to do what they got to do for their own public relations purposes, but the only people in the world that are unhappy about what happened in Iran last night is the regime,” Rubio said.
Rubio stressed that the United States has bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates to protect those countries from Iran and its terrorist network of proxy groups spread across the region.
“Why does Hezbollah exist? “Why does Hamas exist? Because of Iran. How do the Houthis exist? Because of Iran. Who built the IEDs that maimed and killed American soldiers in Iraq? Iran. They’re behind every problem in this region. They are the sole source of instability in the entire Middle East. And the world has been paying a price for this for 40 something years,” Rubio said.
“Imagine those people having a nuclear weapon,” he added. “Just one. Just one nuclear weapon. Or even the capability to — being on the threshold of having a nuclear weapon. That’s what the world was facing. That is unacceptable. President Trump did the world a favor last night.”