OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:07 AM – Sunday, June 22, 2025
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that an Iranian military response to U.S. strikes would be “the worst mistake they’ve ever made.”
President Donald Trump greenlit strikes targeting three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday night – issuing a follow-up Truth Social post announcing that all three attacks were “successful.”
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump wrote. “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.”
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Rubio made a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” show – beginning by stating that the U.S. is not at war with Iran.
“This is not a war against Iran. This is very simple, 67 days ago the President of the United States sent Iran a letter and it said, ‘you’re not going to have nuclear weapons. You’re not going to have a militarized nuclear program. Let’s negotiate, I want to do this diplomatically, I want to do this peacefully,’” Rubio stated.
Rubio went on to argue that Iran “tried to play [Trump] along,” indicating that the Iranian regime was not taking the nuclear negotiations seriously.
“The president told them, if we don’t get a deal – which is what we wanted – then I’ll have to handle it differently. And that’s what he did last night,” Rubio continued. “That was an Iranian choice, we didn’t make that choice, they did, by playing games with Donald Trump – they made a huge mistake.”
Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo asked Rubio if he expects Iran to retaliate to which he responded: “Well, if they retaliate it will be the worst mistake they’ve ever made. Look, we can fly in and out of Iran at will.”
“They didn’t even know what had happened – by the time we left the planes were out of their airspace before they finally started realizing they had been hit, so it would be a terrible mistake if Iran retaliates. But that’s not our goal, we are not declaring war on Iran, we’re not looking for war in Iran but if they attack us, then I think we have capabilities they haven’t even seen yet.”
Rubio added that Iran will “continue to have problems” should they further pursue the enrichment of uranium.
“At the end of the day, if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power I do think it puts their regime at risk, I really do. I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that,” he stated. “Ultimately they have to make a decision, it’s a very simple decision. If what they want is nuclear reactors so they can have electricity – there are so many other countries in the world that do that, and they don’t have to enrich their own uranium – they can do that.”
“But if what they want is a secret program buried in the mountain where no one can see it and inspectors can only come when they say they can come, if that’s what they want, then they are going to have big problems because this is a dangerous, violent, radical regime.”
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