Marco Rubio

We are on or ahead of schedule on each of those four objectives, and we can see the finish line.

It's not today, it's not tomorrow, but it is coming.

We are going to get to the point where our military will have achieved all of its objectives in this mission, and they're doing so with extraordinary efficiency.

Imagine in Iran that instead of spending their wealth, billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, had spent that money helping the people of Iran, you'd have a much different country.

Secretary Marco Rubio said the Iranians' baseline philosophy meant action needed to be taken.

Therefore, he said, the Trump administration is making sure the Iranians cannot secure a nuclear weapon.

Secretary Rubio says Operation Epic Fury has largely eliminated that possibility by decimating Iran's Air Force, Navy, supply of missile launchers, and the country's defense industrial base.

That'll be good.

But it doesn't matter whether they come or not.

We've set them back.

It'll take 15 to 20 years for them to rebuild what we've done to them.

Because people have died because of malfeasance in office.

There's messages and some direct talks going on between some inside of Iran and the United States, primarily through intermediaries, but there's been some conversation.

And I think the president always prefers diplomacy.

We always prefer to settle things through negotiation and diplomacy, but we also have to be prepared for the fact that that effort might fail.

If there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future, that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world.

But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability, that that is not the case.

Well, what I mean is, you have people that are saying some of the right things privately.

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.

But at the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they're the ones that have the power to deliver.