On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a brief press conference to share the latest developments regarding the situation in and above Iran. This update followed his recent briefing with the Congressional Gang of Eight, during which he outlined the current progress of Operation Epic Fury. Here are some of the key highlights.
To begin with, Rubio explains why the operation was launched now:
Number One is, no matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen. That’s the question of why now. But this operation needed to happen. Because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it. Because they could hold the whole world hostage. Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what.
Of interest, when Rubio let this slip (maybe intentionally) “…we were aware of Israeli intentions.” Did that mean Israel was going to strike Iran anyway? It would have been much more difficult for the Jewish state to do so by itself, powerful as it is.
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Then Rubio said this:
They’re suffering a tremendous amount of damage. Honestly – and again, I’m not going to give away the details of our tactical efforts, but the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military. The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now. Someone was screaming how long will it take, I don’t know how long it will take, we have objectives. We will do this as long as it takes to achieve those objectives. And we will achieve those objectives. The world will be a safer place when we’re done with this operation.
‘The hardest hits are yet to come.’ Iran’s navy, what it even was, is gone, and the same goes for their air force. The Supreme Leader is now stinking up some morgue. Most of the senior military and regime leadership have been eliminated, and their key military installations lie in ruins. However, the most significant blows are yet to be delivered. This is a crucial moment. If this regime can be toppled for good and a modern, representative government can rise from the ashes, it would transform not just the Middle East but the world as a whole.
And now, the objectives of Operation Epic Fury:
We would love to see this regime be replaced. And ultimately, as the president has said… (unintelligible call from the press) No, let me finish my answer. As the president said, he would love for the people of Iran to use this as an opportunity to rise up and remove these leaders. They’ve been wanting to remove them for a long time. We’ve seen successive waves of protests. And we’ve seen them slaughter people. But the objective of this mission is to make sure they don’t have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing now.
And while we would love to see a new regime, the bottom line is, no matter who governs that country, a year from now, they’re not going to have these ballistic missiles, and they’re not going to have these drones to threaten us. That’s the objective of this mission. It’s to deny them the ability to use ballistic missiles to threaten their neighbors, to threaten our bases, to threaten our presence in the region, and ultimately as a shield behind which they can do whatever they want with their nuclear weapons ambition. We were not going to let them hide behind that. And that’s why this was such a critical mission to undertake now, while they were at their weakest point, and not a year from now, where they could inflict even more damage and perhaps already be behind that point of immunity.
The primary goal of this mission, according to official American policy as stated by the Secretary of State, is the disarmament of Iran. The secondary concern is to give the people of Iran the opportunity to reclaim their country. This focus on disarmament may make sense from a national security perspective. However, from a humanitarian standpoint and in the interest of civilization, it seems essential—indeed, crucial—to end the theocracy in Iran once and for all. Doing so would also address the issue of weapons.
