Marco Rubio Orders Iranian Diplomats Out of the Country Days After UN Assembly: 'Overstayed Their Welcome'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio bounced Iran’s diplomatic delegation out of New York City days before the Iranians planned to leave.
Iran’s foreign minister and his aides had come to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, at which President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke last week, according to the Associated Press.
Pezeshkian left after addressing the U.N., but Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi hung around.
In theory, Araghchi stayed to make diplomatic overtures to end the war between the United States and Iran.
Not much happened, leading Rubio to decide the Iranians had “overstayed their welcome.”
Even though the Iranian delegation planned to stay in New York City until Wednesday, Rubio pulled the plug on their tourist adventures on Monday.
The delegation left on Tuesday.
Iranian diplomats denied they were given the bum’s rush.
“The Iranian delegation left New York on Monday evening, in accordance with the schedule that had also been communicated to the U.S. Department of State in advance on September 17,” the delegation wrote on social media.
“Having achieved nothing, the State Department has resorted to propagating baseless and worthless news.”
In an interview posted to the State Department’s website, Rubio noted that Iran has single-mindedly produced a strategy of military aggression and terrorism.
“Every dollar that Iran has, what they have done over the last 30 years is anytime they get money — be it under Obama’s sanction relief, be it under economic selling of oil and gas or whatever — they don’t use that money to build hospitals; they don’t use that money to build roads. They don’t use that money to improve the life of the Iranian people,” he said.
“They use that money to do two things: build weapons for themselves and export the revolution. They use the money to fund Hezbollah; they use the money to fund Hamas; they use the money to fund Shia militias in Iraq. That’s what they use — they use the money to sponsor terrorism and assassination plots all over the world,” Rubio continued.
“And so every penny that they get into their hands is money that they use for purposes of these malign activities. And so when you’re denying them money through oil sales and sanctions, you’re not just punishing them,” he added.
“You are preventing them from getting access to money that they will use to try and kill Americans and others around the world and their own people, and build weapons and threaten the world and ultimately break out to a nuclear weapon program.”
He said Iran’s guiding purpose is difficult for many to understand.
“Oftentimes people make the mistake of equating Iran to a country. It is a country, but the problem with Iran is not the country. The problem with Iran is the revolution, and that’s what governs in that country,” he said.
“It’s not the government officials you see with the suits on that go on Meet the Press and get this free pass on American media. That’s not who we’re talking about here. Who calls the shots in Iran are radical Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future. They believe that it is their religious calling to trigger about the last days of the world and the apocalypse.”
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