Secretary Rubio: I Would Encourage Beijing To Ask Iran Not To Close Strait Of Hormuz
Secretary of State Marco Rubio advised China, during an interview with FNC’s Maria Bartiromo, to call the Iranians and beg them not to shut down the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
MARIA BARTIROMO: Do you expect Iran to move to close the Strait of Hormuz to disrupt oil transportation across the world? SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: I would encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them. They heavily depend on the Strait of Hormuz for their oil. That would be another terrible mistake. It’s economic suicide if they do it. We retain options to deal with that. Other countries-just look at that-it would hurt other countries a lot worse than ours. It would be a massive escalation that would merit a response, not just by us but from others. They’re going to say what they need to say. These are the things that need to happen for their own internal politics and so forth. In the end, we’re going to judge them by the actions that they take moving forward. We had three objectives. We struck the three objectives with decisive force, and that was the point of this mission. What happens next will depend on what they do. They want to negotiate-we’re ready to negotiate. They want to go and do things dangerous-we have responses available that are devastating. BARTIROMO: Was China complicit? We know we just flew into Iran, but we don’t know what round those jets. RUBIO: We don’t have any evidence the Chinese were involved in anything other than trying to get Chinese nationals out of Iran.
