Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States would welcome a change in Iran’s leadership but emphasized that the immediate objective of current military actions is to prevent the regime from possessing weapons capable of threatening the United States and its allies.

Rubio addressed the issue while discussing U.S. operations targeting Iran’s military capabilities.

He acknowledged long-standing unrest within Iran and repeated statements from President Donald Trump regarding the Iranian people.

“Well, we would love to see this regime be replaced, and ultimately, as the President has said, He paused, no, no. But let me finish my answer. As the President has said, he would love for the people of Iran to use this as an opportunity to rise up and remove these leaks. They've been wanting to remove them from a long time. We've seen successive waves of protests, and we've seen them slaughter people, okay,” Rubio said.

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Rubio referenced repeated protests in Iran and government crackdowns, noting that opposition to the current leadership has surfaced in multiple waves over the years.

He then shifted to what he described as the primary focus of the U.S. mission.

“But the objective of this mission is to make sure they don't have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region. That's why we're doing what we're doing now,” Rubio said.

He stated that, regardless of who governs Iran in the future, the goal is to ensure the country is deprived of certain military capabilities.

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“And while we would love to see a new regime, the bottom line is, no matter who governs that country a year from now, they're not going to have these ballistic missiles, and they're not going to have these drones to threaten us,” Rubio said.

According to Rubio, the mission is focused on removing Iran’s ability to use specific weapons systems to destabilize the region.

“That's the objective of this mission, is to deny them the ability to use ballistic missiles to threaten their neighbors, to threaten our bases, to threaten our presence in the region,” he said.

Rubio also tied the effort to concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“And ultimately as a shield behind which they can do whatever they want with their nuclear weapons. Ambition, we were not going to let them hide behind that,” Rubio said.

He argued that the timing of the operation was deliberate and necessary.

“And that's why this was such a critical mission to undertake now, while they were at the weakest point and not a year from now, where they could inflict even more damage and perhaps already be behind that point of immunity,” Rubio said.

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