Fox News "The Story with Martha MacCallum" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Marco Rubio
Statement
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MACCALLUM: Joining me now, Senator Marco Rubio, former -- a member of the foreign relations committee. Senator, good evening. Good to have you with us. Thanks for being here tonight.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA.: Thank you.
MACCALLUM: Let's kind of go through that backwards. When you look at what Benjamin Netanyahu was saying, the prime minister there, he is responding to a lawmaker in Israel who said that any attack on us, Israel's remaining life span would not reach even a half an hour. Your thoughts on that tonight?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, these threats from Iran have been pretty consistent and I think they mean it. Look, this is a country whose leader leads chants every Friday, death to America, death to Israel.
MACCALLUM: That's right.
RUBIO: And when you think about the fact that they are trying to acquire nuclear weapons, which is long term goal of theirs but they've already developed long range missiles, they continue to build these missiles. I think you'll see them to continue to test these missiles of longer and longer range and accuracy.
They sponsor terrorism all over the region, primarily as proxy forces that by the way killed and maimed hundreds of Americans in Iraq. They were the authors and the builders of those IEDs that hurt our troops there in the past and you've seen the recent attacks as well and things they've done in the region.
This is par for the course with a terroristic regime that needs to be reined in. And the problem with the Iran deal was it allowed them to do all of that. The only thing it said is you couldn't enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium but you could continue to do the missiles, you could continue to do the cyber-attacks, you could continue to sponsor the terrorism. That's ridiculous.
MACCALLUM: But what do you say to those who say, look, under the deal, if you believe Iran, and I guess that's a big if in this situation, they were not enriching to the levels that they are now enriching to and that under the deal it would have taken a year for them to acquire a nuclear weapon and that is also now off the table. What do we do to stop them? We say they can't have a nuclear weapon, but what are we going to do?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, let's start with the deal didn't cover. The deal allowed them to continue -- they could continue to build these missiles and they didn't violate the deal. They could continue to pour millions of dollars into Hezbollah and other proxy terrorist organizations, and that wasn't a violation of the deal.
They could carry out sanctions' evasions on behalf of Syria, which is the reason why that ship was seized by the British marines off Gibraltar, because it was taking oil to a prohibited entity and it didn't violate the deal.
And ultimately, at some point down the road, once they have their missiles, once they poured billions of dollars from sanctions relief into building their capabilities to do all of these things, then Iran would announce, you know, we are going to be nuclear-capable and we're going to enrich, at that point they will have achieved a lot at this and they will be hoping that at that point in time the world will be less willing to reimpose sanctions.
That was their plan all along and the president was right to get us out of the deal, and by the way, this was an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. The president said he would pull us out of the deal, Hillary Clinton said she would keep it.
MACCALLUM: Yes.
RUBIO: He won and he's doing what he said he would do and he's doing the right thing in my view.
MACCALLUM: Yes. But what happens when push comes to shove? I mean, they are being very provocative going after tankers. There's, you know, the Saudi -- the airport bombing as well. So, what happens when push comes to shove? How do we back up and say that we mean it? What are we going to do?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, Americans, the United States is always going to defend itself against any attacks against us, our interest, or are personnel. That was true during the deal, before the deal and after the deal. That will always be true.
If Iran attacked the United States, they are going to get a response that will be strong and definitive.
That said, the sanctions continue in place. We are not going to -- we are not going to put back this relief so that they can have millions and millions of more dollars every month that they can use to build the rockets to sponsor the terrorism.
My goodness, you've already seen that Hezbollah has announced openly that they are having budget problems and funding problems. That is related to the sanctions being put back in.
MACCALLUM: All right. We are going to watch, as I know you do every single day in the Senate. Before I let you go, though, I want to ask you a Florida question with relation to this Epstein case.
And the Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, who was involved, he's one of the prosecutors who was part of what was seen as just a very sweet deal, given what was at stake here. What you think should happen? Should he remain as labor secretary?
RUBIO: Well, first of all, I think we need to know exactly why the deal was made. There's only two -- there's only two ways this happen. The first is it was a very difficult prosecutorial decision, which as Secretary Acosta has said that at the time, they didn't have enough witnesses, they didn't have enough evidence, the state grand jury couldn't even indict him and there was a real fear he could walk.
It was either that, that in hindsight looks terrible, or it was political influence and people protecting him. And that's why the Department of Justice is undertaking a probe right now if there was prosecutorial misconduct, there should be accountability for that and that's what we are hoping to find out from this probe, and we should wait before it comes back before we make any further pronouncements about that.
MACCALLUM: OK, Senator Rubio, always good to have you on THE STORY. Thank you very much tonight, sir.
RUBIO: Thank you.
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