Marco Rubio accuses Iran of attempting to ‘hold the world hostage’ amid escalating US-Iran conflict

US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Monday accused Iran of attempting to “hold the world hostage” through retaliatory military strikes, amid escalating regional tensions following US-Israeli strikes on the country last week.Speaking at an event at the State Department on Monday, Rubio said Washington was on track to achieve its war objectives against Tehran.“I think we are all seeing right now the threat this clerical regime poses to the region and to the world. They are trying to hold the world hostage,” Rubio said.His remarks come a week after the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February, in which Iran’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed.

Since then, Iran has launched waves of retaliatory strikes with missiles and drones targeting Israel as well as Gulf Arab monarchies that host key US military bases.Rubio further accused Tehran of escalating the conflict by targeting neighbouring states and civilian infrastructure, saying “They are attacking neighboring countries, their energy infrastructure, their civilian population,” he said. “The objective of this mission is to destroy their ability to continue to do that, and we are well on our way to achieving that", he added, news agency AFP reported.

Rubio made the remarks during an event honouring Americans who had been wrongfully detained or taken hostage abroad. Family members of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in 2007 on Iran’s Kish Island, also attended.The United States had concluded in 2020 that the Iranian government was involved in Levinson’s presumed death. He had reportedly travelled to Iran to investigate cigarette counterfeiting, although The Washington Post reported in 2013 that he had been working with the CIA and had embarked on an unauthorised intelligence-gathering mission.Rubio said Levinson’s case reflected the nature of the Iranian government.Levinson is “particularly a reminder of the nature of the regime that we're dealing with in Tehran,” Rubio said.“They were founded, unfortunately, on an assault on the brave men and women of our foreign and civil service,” he added, referring to the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran following the 1979 revolution.