Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the destruction of Iran’s military has prevented the country from using a “conventional shield” to protect its nuclear program in the future.
Rubio suggested that if the United States had not launched Operation Epic Fury earlier this year, Iran would have produced “so many missiles, so many drones, so many conventional weapons, including a navy, that at that point there’s nothing you could do about it.”
“Today, there is no Iranian Navy,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “There is no such thing. There’s a bunch of Boston Whalers with machine guns on them, but there is no navy.”
“It lies at the bottom of the ocean and will soon, within a number of years, be prime fishing spots because they’ll turn into reefs,” Rubio said. “So, my whole point is that the Iranian conventional shield has been substantially eroded.”
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This appearance before the committee was his first since Operation Epic Fury began in late February. Members of the committee grilled Rubio to explain the “indecipherable” goals of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Rubio said the Trump administration demands the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and for Tehran to announce its intentions to “dispose of [its] enriched uranium.”