ISTANBUL

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that US President Donald Trump would prefer resolving issues with Iran through negotiated deals.

“The president has said that his preference is to reach a deal with Iran. That's very hard to do, but he's going to try. And that's what we're trying to do right now,” Rubio said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Stating that nation-states need to interact with one another, Rubio said he serves “under a president that’s willing to meet with anybody.”

“I’m pretty confident in saying that if the Ayatollah (Ali Khamenei) said tomorrow he wanted to meet with President Trump, the president would meet him, not because he agrees with the Ayatollah, but because he thinks that’s the way you solve problems in the world,” he added.

Asked about the deployment of a second US aircraft carrier to the Middle East, Rubio said Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon “will never be allowed,” calling it a threat to the US, Europe, the region and global security.

“We obviously want to have forces in the region because Iran has shown the willingness and the capability to lash and strike out at the United States' presence in the region,” he said, noting that Washington has bases because of their alliances in the region.

“Iran has shown in the past that they're willing to attack us and or threaten our bases,” he said, and the US has to have “sufficient firepower in the region to ensure that they don't make a mistake and come after us and trigger something larger.”