Rubio hopes China tells Iran's FM they are ‘the bad guy’ in Hormuz crisis

“The people of Iran are daily victims of the regime, and the President has deep sympathy for what they’re going through,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

“I don’t know of any country in the world where there’s a bigger difference between the people and the people who run the country,” he added.

“This country is run by radical Shia clerics, and that’s not what Iran and the Iranian people are,” he said.

Rubio said Iranians “just want a normal life and a regular life,” adding that Iran has “an incredible history” and “an incredible legacy.”

"If Iran had a nuclear weapon, they'd close the strait, and they'd tell the world, what are you going to do about it? We have a nuclear weapon. We can attack you with it. That's the world none of us want to leave behind. It won't happen under this President's watch," State Secretary Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

"If Iran had a nuclear weapon and they decided to close the straits and make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon, or $8 a gallon, we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, because they have a nuclear weapon and a nuclear armed Iran could do whatever they held they want with the straits, and there's nothing anyone will be able to do about it."

"And that's one of the many reasons, apart from like the massive loss of life in a nuclear strike, why Iran can never have a nuclear weapon," he told reporters.

Asked about arming protestors in Iran, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump was “heartbroken” by images of Iranians facing abuse by their government and wished they had the ability to fight back.

“This is a vicious regime ... These are people that hang people from cranes in the town square,” Rubio told reporters at the White House.

“These are people that hang people from cranes in the town square,” he said.

“So I think what the President is expressing is the desire that he wishes the Iranian people had an ability to fight back against some of these things that are happening to them,” he added.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran must return to negotiations, warning that Tehran would face isolation, economic collapse and “total defeat” if it rejects diplomacy.

“They really shouldn’t test the will of the United States, at least not under President Donald Trump,” Rubio told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.

“The alternative is growing isolation, economic collapse and ultimately, total defeat,” he said.

Rubio said Iran’s actions suggested it wanted a military nuclear program.

“They’re acting like they want a military ... nuclear program. That’s unacceptable,” Rubio said.

Rubio cited Iran’s long-range missiles, underground enrichment sites and uranium enriched to 60%, which he said had “no civilian use, none, zero whatsoever.”

One Iranian oil tanker may have slipped through a US blockade on Iran’s shipping, Bloomberg reported, citing Tanker Trackers, a firm that uses satellite imagery to monitor vessel movements.

The very large crude carrier Huge, sailing under Iran’s flag, signaled on Sunday that it was off Bali’s coast after months of not appearing on digital ship-tracking systems, the report said.

Satellite imagery also showed the vessel there, Bloomberg quoted Tanker Trackers co-founder Samir Madani as saying, adding that the tanker was still at an Iranian port just hours before the US blockade began on April 13.