In a slip-up of speech on Fox News on Monday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida nearly raised the specter of a “nuclear strike” on Iran, before correcting himself.
Rubio went on Fox’s The Five to attack President Barack Obama for “aggressively seeking a deal with Iran”, as negotiators in Switzerland raced to reach a framework agreement on the country’s nuclear program in advance of a deadline Tuesday.
“We should never, ever take off the table the notion that it may be necessary to conduct some sort of nucle – uh, military strike against their nuclear ambition,” Rubio said. “I’m not cheering for that. I’m not asking for that today. But I am saying that is a real option, because that is how serious the Iranian nuclear threat is.”
Rubio has signalled strong interest in joining the 2016 presidential race, based in part on his purported foreign policy expertise. He has promised a major announcement about his future to be made on 13 April.
On Fox News, Rubio said that President Obama had failed to impose a sufficiently strong ultimatum on the Iran negotiations.
“The sanctions are important and must continue,” Rubio said, adding that the president must confront Iran with “the fundamental choice: you can have an economy or you can have a nuclear weapon, but you can’t have both”.
Rubio also defended the Iraq war, saying that “hindsight is always 20/20”. He said if the US had not invaded Iraq, there may have been an arms race between Iraq and Iran, suggesting a nuclear arms race.
“We don’t know what the world would look like if Saddam Hussein were still there, but I doubt it would look better,” Rubio said. “It would be worse, or it would be just as bad for different reasons.”
