Rubio says Iran ‘making an attempt to carry world hostage’ with strikes

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Iran of taking the world hostage by means of its retaliatory strikes and insisted that america was on monitor with its struggle aims.

“I believe we’re all seeing proper now the risk this clerical regime poses to the area and to the world. They’re making an attempt to carry the world hostage,” Mr. Rubio mentioned at an occasion on the State Division.

Israel-Iran struggle updates on March 9, 2026

“They’re attacking neighboring international locations, their vitality infrastructure, their civilian inhabitants,” he mentioned.

“The target of this mission is to destroy their capacity to proceed to do this, and we’re nicely on our option to reaching that.”

The USA and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 and promptly killed the Islamic republic’s longtime supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Since then, Iran has fired off a barrage of missiles and drones on Israel and on Gulf Arab monarchies, that are key bases for U.S. forces.

Mr. Rubio was talking at an occasion to honor wrongfully detained People and hostages. He was joined by relations of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in 2007 on the Iranian island of Kish.

The USA concluded in 2020 that the Iranian authorities was concerned in his presumed demise.

Levinson was mentioned to be on a mission to analyze cigarette counterfeiting, though The Washington Publish reported in 2013 that he had been working with the CIA and had gone on a rogue mission to assemble intelligence.

Levinson is “notably a reminder of the character of the regime that we’re coping with in Tehran,” Rubio mentioned.

“They have been based, sadly, on an assault on the courageous women and men of our overseas and civil service,” Rubio mentioned, referring to the taking of hostages on the US embassy in Tehran by Islamic zealots after they toppled the US-aligned shah in 1979.