Marco Rubio says President Donald Trump wants more than proportional retaliation against Iran. The Secretary of State put it bluntly. Speaking to reporters after an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in the Philippines on Thursday, he was asked about the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi describing Tehran’s doctrine as an eye for an eye. Rubio inverted the phrase.
Marco Rubio said Donald Trump wants a harsher response than ‘an eye for an eye’ against Iran
According to the New York Post, Rubio said, “I saw [Abbas] Araghchi, their foreign minister, who the other day said something about their policies, ‘an eye for an eye.’ The president’s policy is a head for an eye.”
He added, “They’re going to continue to pay a very heavy price. Their industrial base has been decimated. Their defense industrial base has been decimated to losing launchers, losing radars every single night.” Those assessments came from the administration and were not independently verified.
The formula he reworked appears in several ancient legal codes and, most familiar, in the Book of Leviticus. The Trump Iran response has hardened in recent days. Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday that the United States would bomb a bridge or power plant, including in Tehran, each time Iran fires on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the threat manifestly unlawful and criminal, and warned American troops against carrying out such orders. Rubio said Washington’s aim remains preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon rather than pursuing regime change, and that Tehran had spent two decades building missiles and drones.
On Iran retaliation, Araghchi has warned that strikes on Iranian infrastructure would draw a powerful and decisive response. The exchange followed the collapse of last month’s tentative peace deal. The conflict widened Wednesday when the Iran-backed Houthi movement attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Trump said Thursday the United States would hold Iran responsible, describing the Houthis as a proxy. Rubio said he believed the group had been drawn in and urged it to stop. Rubio also said Iran was seeking a deal but had not been willing to finalize one. Trump’s foreign policy in the region now rests on that standoff, and US-Iran tensions remain high.
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