JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - US Secretary Of State Marco Rubio has warned that 'hardest hits' on Iran are yet to come from the U.S. military.
Addressing a news conference he said the next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now.
When asked how long will the conflict in the Middle East last, Rubio replied, 'I don't know how long it'll 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 State Department head told reporters that the clear objective of the United States' military operation was to eliminate the threat of Iran's short-range ballistic missiles, drones and the threat posed by their navy to international shipping.
He said the U.S. was forced to strike now 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.'
Iran is producing, by some estimates, more than 100 ballistic missiles a month, according to Rubio.
He said that though currently the Trump administration is not 'postured for ground forces' to have their footsteps in Iran, the President has those options. 'He's never going to rule out anything. But right now our focus is on the destruction of their ballistic missile launchers, their ballistic missile stockpiles, and their ballistic missile manufacturing capability, as well as their one-way attack drones and their navy because of the threat it poses to global shipping.'
To mitigate concerns about rising energy prices given the spiking of oil prices, Rubio said the U.S. government has a program in place and that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Treasury Jeff Bessent will begin to roll out those steps on Tuesday.
In a separate news conference on Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth echoed Rubio's ideas regarding U.S. objectives in the war against Iran.
'This operation [has] a clear, devastating, decisive mission: destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy, no nukes.'
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said planning for an operation such as Epic Fury has been underway for a significant amount of time.
That effort included thousands of service members, hundreds of advanced fighter aircraft, refueling tankers, a sustained flow of munitions, fuel and supplies, and the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike groups, along with their air wings. More capabilities continue to flow into the region, Caine said.
As the violent escalation in the Middle East entered a fourth day on Tuesday sparked by the bombing of Iran by Israel and the United States, more than 550 civilians have been killed in Iran.
Iran retaliated with missile strikes in U.S.-allied Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Israel, whose military responded to Hezbollah strikes from Lebanon on Monday.
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