Iran pays the price for attacks on US: Rubio says Trump administration will continue to attack Iranian oil tankers, 'economically strangle' regime

Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Wednesday that the U.S. military will continue to attack Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attacks on U.S. warships. Rubio also emphasized that President Donald Trump's administration will continue to apply economic pressure on the Iranian regime, with which Washington has been at war for more than seven months.

"At the end of the day, they continue to fire on warships. And when they fire on our warships, they pay a price in oil tankers. They lose a lot of oil tankers. They don't hit our ships, but they lose five oil tankers. They lost another five last night. Four were damaged and one was sunk. So they will continue to pay a price for that," Rubio told reporters in Ecuador, before noting that, in the meantime, the United States will "continue to strangle them economically."

The secretary of state's remarks came just one day after U.S. military forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted attacks on a Navy warship, with Tehran once again launching missiles at a U.S. base in Jordan in response. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed in a statement that it attacked four crude oil tankers used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Gulf of Oman, and a fifth vessel near Kharg Island, the epicenter of Iran's oil industry. According to the agency, these ships were part of "a clandestine network worth billions of dollars" that finances the Revolutionary Guard and its regional allies. CENTCOM specified that the offensive came after Iran fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. warship on two separate occasions within a two-day span.

When asked by several reporters about the course of the war and how it was affecting the economy, Trump stated on Wednesday that Tehran "can't take it anymore" and that the war will end "immediately after the midterm elections." In the same exchange, he accused the regime of seeking a hostile Congress: "They are desperate to influence the election so that a weak group of people comes into power, leaves them alone, and allows them to have their nuclear weapon."