US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday said Iran is at its weakest point since the United States and Israel launched military operations against the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28, while warning that American diplomatic efforts to end the war could fail.

“We are destroying Iran’s navy and its missile launchers by a significant percentage,” Rubio said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” adding that the U.S. intends to “wipe out their defense industrial base, meaning their ability to make new missiles and new drones in the future.”

“We are going to achieve our objectives in a matter of weeks, not months,” Rubio said.

Without the war, Rubio argued, Iran would have had “thousands of more missiles” within two years, a threat he said Trump found unacceptable.

“Look at this region,” Rubio said. “Every single terrorist group in this region has a link to the Iranian regime—every single one… 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.”

But even as Rubio catalogued the military gains, he struck a hedged tone on the diplomatic track, saying Washington must be prepared for the “probability” that Iran rejects a negotiated settlement.

“We’re 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 and peace,” Rubio said.

The remarks cut against Trump’s assertion that U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s top leadership have effectively produced regime change. Rubio acknowledged that some Iranian officials are engaging Washington in ways their predecessors never did — “there are clearly people there talking to us in ways that previous people in charge of Iran have not spoken to us in the past” — but stopped well short of confirming a fundamental shift in the Iranian government.

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

The comment stood in contrast to Trump’s Truth Social post earlier Monday, in which the president said talks with what he described as “a new, and more reasonable, regime” were producing “great progress” and that a deal would “probably” be reached.

Rubio said the administration intends to test whether Iran can back up its diplomatic signals with concrete action, without elaborating on what steps Washington would require.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)