(June 4): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration was aware of the potential global economic fallout from launching a war against Iran but assessed the threat of Tehran eventually getting a nuclear weapon to be more serious.
“The president and the full administration was aware that there would be consequences to action, but the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon were worse,” Rubio said on Wednesday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington. “We were prepared for any response.”
He was responding to questions from New York Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the committee, who repeatedly asked whether Rubio had warned President Donald Trump about the potential economic impact of a war that has raised gasoline prices for Americans and fuelled global inflation.
Meeks said Trump and wealthy members of his administration were profiting from the Iran war while ordinary Americans suffered the consequences. He also asked about Trump’s stock trades, given financial disclosures showed Trump or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter, a flurry totalling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.
Rubio said that he’d never heard Trump raise his own financial position as a consideration in the war.
The White House also has denied any conflict of interest, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization said that the president’s holdings are independently managed by third-party financial institutions. Still, the revelation has become a key point of criticism from Democrats.
See also: US forces strike Iran after American helicopter is downed
Rubio fielded contentious questions on Capitol Hill for a second day, after he spent much of Tuesday defending the US war effort in Iran as part of the annual budget process. Rubio reiterated that the US military has degraded much of Iran’s military capabilities, weakening its ability to protect its nuclear programme work using conventional weapons.
Rubio said the latest flareup in violence overnight was the result of Tehran responding to US efforts to defend commercial ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz — which has largely been shuttered since the war began.
He said merchant vessels were coming under illegal attacks from Iranian drones and that US actions were defensive in nature and aimed at neutralising the drone attacks, including by striking sites that have launched the drones.
See also: US, Iran inch closer towards deal as gaps remain on uranium, sanctions
“The US will respond to that attack by shooting down those drones that are trying to sink a commercial civilian vessel illegally and unlawfully, at that point the Iranians will respond to that by targeting some facility in the region in retribution,” Rubio said.
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