Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, said in a television interview with Fox News on Monday night, referring to the repression and killings of the Iranian people by the Islamic Republic: “We’re talking about a regime that has slaughtered tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of its own people over the course of what they call this [period] revolution.”

He also said about the rule of the clerics in Iran: “If they’re willing to do something like that to their own people, imagine what they would do if they had nuclear weapons—with Americans, or others in the region, or the Israelis, or whoever else.”

The U.S. foreign minister emphasized: “They don’t value anyone’s life.”

In another part of his remarks, Marco Rubio stressed the need to distinguish Iran from the Islamic Republic regime, saying: “The last thing I want to say about this is that people often make the mistake of treating Iran as if it’s the same as a country. Iran is a country, but the problem with Iran is not the country. The problem with Iran is the revolution—and it is that which governs that country.”