aboard<\/a> Air Force One en route to China on Wednesday, Rubio said every U.S. president over the past two decades has viewed Iran\u2019s nuclear program as a major threat.<\/p>\n\u201cEvery president in the last 20 years has been worried about the Iran nuclear program,\u201d Rubio said, noting that former U.S. President Barack Obama pursued the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran \u201cbecause he was worried about Iran.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cNot a good nuclear deal, but he made one,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
Rubio contrasted Trump\u2019s approach with that of his predecessors, citing the administration\u2019s \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d sanctions campaign and the 2020 killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, whom Rubio described as \u201ca threat to the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stated that former U.S. President Joe Biden sought to revive the nuclear agreement and pointed to European concerns about Tehran\u2019s activities, noting that countries including France and Germany had imposed sanctions on Iran.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole world has seen Iran was building up a conventional capability where they would have so many missiles and so many drones that they could overwhelm anybody\u2019s defenses,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
He warned that Tehran was nearing the point at which its nuclear program could no longer be stopped militarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were on the verge, and a year from now they would have been at that point,\u201d he said. \u201cThe president said that\u2019s an intolerable risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubio said Iran was also seeking to build a missile and drone arsenal large enough to deter any attack on the Islamic Republic, the result of which would have been \u201ccatastrophic for the region.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce they had that immunity, then they would break out toward a weapon,\u201d he said. \u201cThe president is not going to allow that to happen under his watch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"( May 14, 2026 \/ JNS ) U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed claims that U.S. President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[186],"class_list":{"0":"post-73428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marco-rubio","8":"tag-marco-rubio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116583070915008840","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}