Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US is receiving positive private messages from figures within Iran’s government.
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- Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the US is receiving positive private messages from figures within Iran’s government and hopes to work with those who have “power to deliver.”
- Trump stated Iran has undergone “regime change” after Israel allegedly assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top leaders.
- Despite public diplomatic overtures, the US continues reinforcing its military presence in the region, with Trump threatening to attack Iran’s oil facilities if negotiations fail.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday voiced hope for working with elements within Iran’s government, saying the United States privately had received positive messages.
Rubio said there were internal “fractures” inside the Islamic Republic and that the United States hopes figures with “power to deliver” take charge.
“We are hopeful that that’s the case,” Rubio told the ABC News programme “Good Morning America.”
“There are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge in Iran have not spoken to us in the past, some of the things they’re willing to do,” he said.
Rubio nonetheless also denounced the Islamic Republic in broad strokes, insisting that the war aimed to end its nuclear weapons building capacity, which US President Donald Trump said he accomplished during an attack last year.
Rubio said:
These people are lunatics. They are insane. They are religious zealots who can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon because they have an apocalyptic vision of the future.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, and the UN nuclear watchdog has said no bomb was imminent.
Rubio’s comments came a day after Trump said that Iran has already gone through “regime change,” one month into the war launched by the United States and Israel.
Trump said that the United States was speaking to a “whole different group of people” and that they were “very reasonable.”
READ | G7 allies press Rubio on US-Iran plans
On the first day of the war Israel assassinated Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and subsequent strikes have killed other top leaders.
Rubio said that there was a difference between private and public messages coming from Iran.
Rubio said:
Obviously they’re not going to put it out in press releases, and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn’t necessarily reflect what they’re saying in our conversations.
Despite the Trump administration’s public talk of diplomacy, the United States has been reinforcing its military presence in the region, and Trump on Monday threatened to “blow up” Iran’s oil-exporting island of Kharg if purported talks fail.
The comments from the administration signal a readiness to work with some form of the Islamic Republic, after the United States and Israel at the start of the war spoke of toppling the government, which weeks earlier killed thousands of people as it crushed mass protests.
