Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday turned to the pioneering Latin hip-hop group Cypress Hill for a turn of phrase to describe what the Trump administration says is dysfunction in the Iranian government that has made it difficult for Tehran to engage in talks with the U.S. after more than two months of intermittent fighting.
Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room as the first in what is understood to be a series of stand-ins for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt while she is on maternity leave, Rubio said the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports would continue until Iran ceases efforts to prevent free maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz through what he described as “piracy.”
“There is no scenario here in which, if they decide to join a ladder of escalation, they wind up getting the last say, but our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they’re supposed to be open, back to the way it was. Anyone can use it. No mines in the water, nobody paying tolls. That’s what we have to get back to, and that’s the goal here,” he said.
“The time has come for Iran to make a sensible choice, and it’s not easy for them to do that, obviously, because they have a fracture in their own leadership system … and apart from that, I mean, the top people in that government are, to say the least … they’re insane in the brain, and so we need to address that.”
Rubio’s quip about the mental condition of leadership in Tehran was lifted straight from the chorus of “Insane in the Brain,” the first single off Cypress Hill’s 1993 album “Black Sunday.”
Originally a diss track aimed at rival rappers Chubb Rock and Kid Frost, the hit song was described by The Independent’s then-music critic, Ben Thompson, as “potent dose of marijuana-inflected nasal squeak-rap” and “the party record of the aeon.”
More follows…
