Iran ‘weaker than it has ever been,’ Rubio says

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate panel on Wednesday that Iran is “weaker than it has ever been,” as the United States moves additional military forces into the region for a potential confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio compared the situation in Iran to U.S. forces removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier in the month.

“I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer as to what happens next in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime were to fall, other than the hope that there would be some ability to have somebody within their system that you could work towards a similar transition,” Rubio told the senators.

“I would imagine it would be even far more complex than the one we’re describing now, because you’re talking about a regime that’s been in place for a very long time,” he said.

Prior to Rubio’s testimony, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Wednesday that he was sending an “armada,” headed by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, toward Iran to force the regime to make a deal to relinquish its nuclear program or risk a repeat of the U.S. airstrikes against its nuclear facilities in June.

“The next attack will be far worse,” Trump stated. “Don’t make that happen again.”

Over the past month, Iran has carried out a brutal crackdown throughout the country on anti-regime protests sparked by economic and environmental concerns, including a faltering banking system and water shortages in Tehran.

The exact death toll is unknown. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activist News Agency, which tries to verify individual deaths, says that nearly 6,000 protesters have been killed. Other estimates are in the tens of thousands.

Rubio said that the number of people the regime has killed is “in the thousands, for certain,” but that despite the crackdown, mass protests against the Iranian government are likely to recur.

“Regimes, including the one in Iran, have learned that when you start shooting people in the head with snipers, it’s effective. It works,” he said. “They’ve done it and it’s horrifying.”

“That regime is probably weaker than it has ever been and the core problem they face, unlike the protests you saw in the past on some other topics, is that they don’t have a way to address the core complaints of the protesters, which is that their economy is in collapse,” he added.

“The protests may have ebbed, but they will spark up again in the future, because this regime,” unless it is willing to change or to leave, has “no way of addressing the legitimate and consistent complaints of the people of Iran who deserve better,” he said.

© JNS