Home Office of the Spokesperson Press Releases … Secretary of State Marco Rubio with George Stephanopoulos of ABC Good Morning America hide

Secretary of State Marco Rubio with George Stephanopoulos of ABC Good Morning America

Interview

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State

Washington, D.C.

March 30, 2026

QUESTION: Let’s talk more about this with the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.  Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning.  Let’s talk about the President’s comments overnight, talking about taking the oil on Kharg Island.  How would he do this?  Why would he do this?  Won’t it take ground troops?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, first of all, it’s important to remember the objectives of this operation from the very beginning.  We were going to – we are destroying Iran’s navy.  We are destroying their ability – their missile launchers by a significant percentage.  We’re going to wipe out their defense industrial base, meaning their ability to make new missiles and new drones in the future, because it posed a great threat to the region.  This Iran that you’re seeing now, this is Iran at its weakest point.  Imagine them two years from now if they had thousands of more missiles to – thousands of more missile launchers and factories to make even more.  That was an unacceptable risk, it needed to be addressed, and President Trump is addressing it.

Now, they are making threats about controlling the Hormuz Straits in perpetuity, creating a tolling system and the like.  That’s not going to be allowed to happen.  And the President has a number of options available to him, if he so chooses, to prevent that from happening.  Obviously I’m not going to discuss what those options are, and we’re not going to discuss military tactics.  The Department of War would be in charge of those things.  I’d refer you to them, but obviously they’re not going to discuss it with you either.  But there is a way forward here to achieve our objectives.  We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months.

QUESTION: Well, let’s talk about taking the oil because the President laid out that objective last night.  And taking the oil will take ground troops, won’t it?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, again, the Iranians are threatening that they are going to set up some permanent system in the Straits of Hormuz where they get to decide who goes through international waterways.  That will never be allowed to happen.  By the way, the rest of the world should take note of that.  They have more at stake there than we do.  We get very little of our energy in this country coming through the Straits of Hormuz.  The rest of the world gets a lot more.  That said, the President has several options at his disposal, and the Department of War is preparing optionality for the President for this and various other contingencies that might arise.  That’s what always needs to happen in situations like this.

But what I want the American people and the people watching this broadcast to know is that fundamentally, what this is about is the destruction of their air force, which has been largely achieved, the destruction of their navy, which has been largely achieved, the destruction of their factories that they make all these weapons with, which is – we’re well on our way to achieving, and a substantial reduction in the number of missile launchers that they have so that they cannot continue to threaten their neighbors in the future.  All of those objectives are being met ahead – on or ahead of schedule and should be able to achieve in a matter of weeks.

QUESTION: As you’re speaking, though, the President is expanding the objectives.  Just a couple minutes ago, he put out a post on Truth Social saying that we’re in discussions now with a new and more reasonable regime in Iran, but he also added that if those discussions don’t yield fruit, the United States will blow up and completely obliterate all of their electric-generating plants, all their oil wells, and Kharg Island, and possibly all desalinization plants, which we have purposely not yet touched – is what he said.  That’s a great expansion of the objectives.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I think the first point the President makes is he prefers diplomacy.  As I have said, those efforts are nascent.  There is messages being relayed back and forth, some conversations going on, including through intermediaries.  And he always prefers that.

Look, if the Iranian regime had come forward at any point in the past and said we’re going to walk away from our nuclear ambitions, we’re going to do nuclear energy the way every other country in the world primarily – almost every other country in the world does it, and that is through a peaceful means in which you bring in the fuel and it’s supervised and so forth, and we’re not – we’re going to stop supporting terrorist groups across the region – look at this region.  Every single terrorist group in this region has a link to the Iranian regime.  Every single one:  the Houthis, Hizballah, Hamas, the Shia militias that are attacking everyone out of Iraq.

Every single one of these groups and all the destabilization in this region tracks directly back to the Iranian regime.  Those things have to be addressed.  And if Iran had been willing to address those in the past, we wouldn’t be having this interview on this topic right now.  Their refusal to do so and their continuing move towards one day acquiring a nuclear capability – 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.  And all of their neighbors know that, by the way, which is why all of their neighbors have been supportive of the efforts we’re conducting.

QUESTION: You call them lunatics, but the President just had this post where he says we’re in discussions with a new and more reasonable regime.  Let me try to pin you down on that.  Who is this new and more reasonable regime?  Is the United States – is in direct contact with them?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran.  Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally.  And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that’s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great.  Imagine an 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.

So we are always hopeful that that would exist over there.  It’s unfortunate.  The people of Iran are incredible people.  The people who lead them, this clerical regime, that is the problem.  And 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.  So we’re going to test it.  We’re —

QUESTION: Well, but the President said they are.  Is that the case or is it not?  I’m just trying to get some clarity on that.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, what I mean is – yeah, so 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.  We’re going to test it.  We are hopeful that that’s the case.  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, some of the things they’re saying they’re willing to do.  Obviously they have to go do it.

We’re going to test that proposition very strongly, because 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, that we are dealing with a 47-year-old regime that still has a lot of people involved in it who aren’t necessarily big fans of diplomacy or peace.

QUESTION: And if it fails, the war expands?

SECRETARY RUBIO: What’s that?  I’m sorry.

QUESTION: If it fails, the war expands?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, the war is – this operation, okay – and that’s what this is – is about very specific objectives.  The President laid them out on the first night of the operation.  I’ll repeat them to you now because I hear a lot of talk about we don’t know what the clear objectives are.  Here they are.  You should write them down.  Number one, the destruction of their air force.  Number two, the destruction of their navy.  Number three, the severe diminishing of their missile launching capability.  And number four, the destruction of their factories so they can’t make more missiles and more drones to threaten us in the future.

All of this so that they can never hide behind it to acquire a nuclear weapon.  That was our objective from the beginning; that remains our objective now.  We are on pace and in fact ahead of schedule on some of those things, and we are going to achieve those things in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, thanks for your time this morning.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thanks, George.

Tags

Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Iran Media Engagement Office of the Spokesperson The Secretary of State
Back to Top