The U.S. secretary of state, at a press conference on the sidelines of the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Manila, called the Islamic Republic the main root of the crisis, including the Houthi threat in the Red Sea.

According to Marco Rubio, the Islamic Republic has established direct flights from Tehran to Yemen and moved the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces there, and it allocates its resources not for the people of Iran, but for the Houthis, Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, and Hamas.

He said the Islamic Republic, equipped with nuclear weapons, is “unacceptable,” and added that if the Islamic Republic had remained hidden behind its conventional capabilities, it could have moved toward building a nuclear weapon within two years without anyone stopping it.