Rick Scott: conflict with the Islamic Republic will continue until regime change

Rick Scott, Republican senator from the state of Florida, said in an interview with CBS on Tuesday, 20 October 2026, that the US military conflict with the Islamic Republic will continue as long as the regime in Iran has not changed and has not been overthrown. According to him, the United States and Israel have no choice but to keep acting so that the Islamic Republic can never use a nuclear weapon.

Scott said he does not know when the next round of conflict will come, but that until the regime changes, confrontations will recur from time to time, and this could last for years. He added that he does not expect the Islamic Republic to back down and that he would support a new round of US bombing if it led to faster regime change. The Republican senator warned that if the Islamic Republic obtains a nuclear weapon, it will stop at nothing to kill Americans, and he praised the performance of the US and Israeli militaries.

Sanctions and the Islamic Republic's capacity for repression

Scott described economic pressure as the way to weaken the Islamic Republic's machinery of repression, saying that a regime without money grows weaker every day. According to him, the economies of rogue regimes must be brought to a halt, and the United States has no other option. His remarks come amid the US naval blockade; Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, said on Tuesday that no tanker has loaded at Kharg Island since August.

Hope for a new uprising by the people of Iran

The Florida senator said he hopes the people of Iran will once again rise up against the Islamic Republic. He acknowledged that after the mass killing of protesters in the January uprising such an uprising is difficult now, but said he believes it will eventually happen. Donald Trump had earlier said that the Islamic Republic has killed at least 75,000 protesters and that people cannot take to the streets under machine-gun fire.

Scott is one of the Republican hardliners on the Islamic Republic and has said repeatedly in recent months that without regime change in Iran, the United States will have to strike its nuclear programme periodically.

Rick Scott: until the Islamic Republic is overthrown, military conflict with it will recur from time to time.