Secretary of State Marco Rubio With Dasha Burns of Politico

QUESTION:  Secretary Rubio, thank you so much for sitting down with me at this critical moment for the nation, the world, and at this historic NATO summit. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, thanks for doing this. 

QUESTION:  I know you have a very busy day ahead, so I’m going to dive right into it.  I want to start with some of the reports overnight.  CNN and The New York Times are reporting that early intel suggests Iranian nuclear facilities were not completely destroyed, and The Times is reporting that the nuclear program was only set back a matter of months.  Now look, I know it’s obviously quite early.  The President is vehemently denying the veracity of these reports.  But can you give us, now that we’ve had a little bit of distance, the latest battle damage assessment?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, I can’t talk to you about intelligence.  I can also tell you that intelligence leaks are one of the most frustrating things anywhere, not just because you’ve got somebody who has access to this putting stuff out there, but because it’s so often mischaracterized.  An intelligence report, for anyone who’s ever seen it, sometimes is an assessment.  Some analyst will make an assessment, or analysts will make an assessment.  And in these leaks, what you typically have is someone who read it and then leaks it to the media, giving it the spin and the angle they want it to have because they’ve got some purpose:  embarrass the administration, they were against the action, whatever it may be. 

Let me tell you this.  The Iranian program, the nuclear program today, looks nothing like it did just a week ago.  The program today has been set behind significantly from where it was a week ago.  It is in far worse shape today than it was a week ago because of U.S. actions and because some of the actions the Israelis took.  So the bottom line is they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the President took this bold action.  That’s the most important thing to understand.  Significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it. 

Understand that most of the damage that occurred here in Fordow occurred deep underground.  That’s why we used penetrator weaponry to do that.  So that’s why I hate commenting on these stories, because often the first story is wrong and the person putting it out there has an agenda.  And I would say that story is a false story and it’s one that really shouldn’t be re-reported because it doesn’t accurately reflect what’s happening here. 

QUESTION:  Do you have a timeline for when you will have a full assessment of exactly the damage that was done? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, that’s a difficult – this is a very unique target set because basically you drilled a hole into the ground with 12 incredible bombs and then went 300 feet into a mountain.  So I don’t think we’re going to be sending anyone down the hole anytime soon into those mountains.  So suffice it to say that we are very confident.  And by the way, it’s not just me saying this.  The director of the IAEA, this is the line he used the other day.  He said the Iran nuclear program looks – there was before the attack and after the attack, and they’re dramatically different things.  That’s his line, and he’s an expert at this – not mine. 

But the most important thing here at the end of the day is they have less capacity today than they did just a week ago to rapidly produce a nuclear weapon behind the world’s back and threaten the world, and the President deserves a tremendous amount of credit for taking this bold stand.  And these pilots did something extraordinary.  They flew halfway across the world and dropped 12 munition bombs perfectly down a ventilation shaft and did the world a great favor.  These pilots did an incredible job.  I’m blown away by it.  It’s science fiction stuff.  I mean, you look —

QUESTION:  It was really remarkable. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  You don’t believe it’s possible, but what they did was remarkable. 

QUESTION:  I mean, look, you know as well as anyone that you have a base that is extremely skeptical of foreign entanglements based on classified information that can’t be shared with the public.  They have lived through the government saying trust us and then that not going so well.  And so a reason many of them voted for President Trump, as a rejection of the Bush era foreign policy. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  Can you speak in more detail to those voters about why you are so confident that the significant damage has been done here, especially since we’re seeing some of these contradictory reports? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, some of it is on open source because of MAX-R and other technologies that are showing you the pictures.  So in Isfahan, there was this conversion site, which is how you turn this metal into something that’s useful.  That’s wiped out.  Can you – you can rebuild anything that’s destroyed.  You could if you wanted to, but it’s completely wiped out.  And so they can’t do that today.  Beyond that, all of the support structures around it as well. 

In Natanz, which is also an underground facility, that had already been destroyed.  Basically the Israelis had put a lot of damage on it, and then the United States went in with two additional heavy munitions that penetrated into the ground and did more damage.  So it was already in bad shape and unusable, and now it’s worse off. 

The hard one, the one that was really difficult, is Fordow because it’s buried underneath a mountain at about 2- to 300 meters underground and – meters or feet, I forget – 300 underground.  It was deep.  And there’s no doubt in our minds that very significant, substantial, lasting damage was done to their program.  We will learn more and more about it, but the baseline is real damage was done.  Of that, we’re very confident. 

QUESTION:  Does this mean —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  We dropped 12 of these things into these holes.  I mean, it’s not like we just did a couple and see how it went. 

QUESTION:  Does this mean the job is done and you can rule out the possibility of near-term future strikes? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, that was never the goal here.  The goal the President set out was three nuclear sites.  He targeted them.  He says I want a one-off, a campaign in which we go in, wipe out three nuclear – hit three nuclear sites, hit them hard, and get out without any loss of life.  And the mission was achieved – and without any escalation.  And the mission was achieved.  The truth of the matter is that happened on Saturday night.  By Monday night, we had a ceasefire, so 48 hours later. 

So not only did this bold move by the President – and he deserves a tremendous amount of credit for taking this bold move.  Not only did this bold move have impact, but I actually think it helped end the conflict.  It allowed Israel to say, okay, now the objectives that we wanted to see out of this operation have been achieved.  And I think the President deserves a lot of credit.  He had a defined mission, said this is what we’re going to do:  We’re hitting three targets; we’re not hitting regime people; we’re not trying to overthrow the government; we’re not looking to invade; we’re going to – our problem with Iran is with the nuclear program; we’re going to hit the three sites that we’ve been negotiating over, and then we’re going to move off the mark.  And that’s what we did.

QUESTION:  So to the Americans that are concerned about where this is going, can you give them some assurance that this is it, that we’re not going into a war with Iran? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah, well, the President’s made clear he doesn’t want a war with Iran.  He’s not looking for a war with Iran.  In fact, he’s still looking for a deal. 

QUESTION:  Well, not wanting a war and getting entangled in one are two different things, right? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, look what happened.  I mean, we basically flew, like I said, halfway across the world, dropped these weapons on three key sites, pulled away, and we were done.  It showed tremendous amount of strategic patience by the President to do that.  He clearly defined the goal, he delivered on it in the limited way that he had defined it, and then we moved on.  We didn’t look to escalate.  In fact, we looked to de-escalate.  You saw they did an attack on one of our bases after warning us that they were going to do it.  Nothing happened; the President didn’t respond.  Two hours later, we have a ceasefire and that war is over. 

Now, the ongoing problems with Iran remain.  It’s the regime.  If the regime wants a civil nuclear program, we can negotiate that with them.  If what they want is a nuclear weapon, that’s not going to happen.  And I think the President has proven that he’s willing to act when he says he’s going to do something. 

QUESTION:  Regime change, okay.  Some people in your party really want it; some people really don’t want it.  The President has posted about it, causing a little bit of confusion about what – where he’s at on this.  So where is the President at, where’s the administration at on regime change?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  I don’t – there should be no confusion about what the President said.

QUESTION:  Okay. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  What the President said is if the regime in Iran does not – wants to keep spending money on terrorism, keep spending money on trying to get nuclear weapons, keep spending money on rockets to attack Israel, and not develop their economy or help their people, maybe there will be regime change because the people of Iran are going to get sick of it. 

QUESTION:  It will come from within, though. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah. 

QUESTION:  That’s not something that the U.S. is – it’s not on the table for the U.S. to get involved in that as of now? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  No.  Listen, the world is filled with regimes I don’t like and the President doesn’t like and a lot of us wish didn’t exist.  The United States’ job is not to go around and set up governments for every country.  The United States’ job is to protect our national security.  Our national security issue with Iran is with a clerical regime that wants nuclear weapons so they can threaten us, threaten Israel today, threaten us tomorrow.  And the President has made clear that’s not going to happen.  That’s what he’s focused on. 

I think what he was commenting, which is exactly right, is look, if your country continues to fall behind economically because you’re living under sanctions because you insist on sponsoring terrorist organizations around the world and spending all your money on Hamas and Hizballah instead of on your own people, yeah, maybe there will be regime change, but it’s because the people of Iran will do it.  But that’s not our plan; it’s never been our plan.  He’s never once talked about that being our plan.  The plan here was very simple: hit the three sites, the three nuclear sites, and get out.  And he did it.  No loss of American life.  We lost tragically – more Americans died evacuating from Afghanistan than were killed in this operation, because the number in this operation were zero. 

QUESTION:  Let’s talk about the ceasefire.  As of now, while we’re talking – this situation is so fast-moving – it seems to be holding after some scolding from President Trump for some bad behavior on both sides.  But what exactly are the terms, and what incentivizes both sides to stick to it, particularly Iran? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, the terms are very simple, and that is that Israel said that their last – they had done – they had finished their mission.  From the very beginning, the Israelis had a defined list of things they wanted to achieve, and once they were done with those things militarily, they were done.  They had achieved those things.  They had achieved those things by Sunday night, Monday morning, and they let us know that after their current operation that was ongoing, they did not intend to conduct any further operations unless they were attacked by Iran. 

And it was at that point when the administration messaged that through intermediaries, the Qataris and others, that the Israelis had informed us that the current operation was their last operation unless they were attacked.  And so the message was simple.  If you don’t – once they leave – I don’t remember the time.  It was maybe 3 a.m. Jerusalem time.  Once that was done, if Iran didn’t hit back, Israel wouldn’t hit back and the war was over.  That message was passed. 

Anytime you do these ceasefires – because we lived this experience, for example, with India and Pakistan – there’s always a few skirmishes.  Maybe someone’s clock was set wrong, and so they missed the time.  In this particular case, unfortunately, tragically, in those final hours there was an attack that killed people in Israel, so that really stirred things up.  It hit an apartment building and literally murdered people living there.  And then there was this stray rocket that was launched.  And we say stray because it was a one-off.  It wasn’t part of a wave.  And the Israelis were going to respond to that. 

And the President gets on the phone and tells them don’t do this.  If you do this, it’s going to restart the thing all over again.  And the Israelis turned around and came home.  And so now that’s the understanding. 

QUESTION:  He was frustrated.  He dropped an F-bomb.  I haven’t heard that from him in public before. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, whatever it takes.  But the point is that – and look, and it was the right move on his part.  Only he – he’s the only person in the world that could have gotten those planes to turn around.  And it was not an easy decision for the Israelis, because they just had – I think at the time the death rose up to five people in this building – beautiful people, beautiful family, young people that had been killed in that strike.  So it was tough.  But Israel had extraordinary success.  I mean, they literally wiped out the upper tiers of their leadership.  Their air defenses are gone.  Iran can’t defend their own airspace, so Israel was done because they had achieved their objectives.

QUESTION:  Speaking of something no one has done, a lot of presidents have wanted NATO members to spend more on defense.  The big headline coming out of this summit is that the NATO countries have agreed to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP.  The President has had a tenuous relationship with NATO, with the EU as well.  What do you think this new commitment from NATO will do to the relationship?  What kind of impact will it have?  Will it strengthen?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  It’ll – it should strengthen it.  I mean, I would call this the Trump summit because this really tracks back, I believe, to 2018 in the first administration I wasn’t in.   

QUESTION:  You’ve got is branding knack now.  (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, I do, okay.  Well, yeah, I guess it gets catchy because the reason why is because in 2018 – I believe it was at his first summit, maybe it was 2017, but a while back.  In in his first administration he challenged NATO.  He had a chart and he brought it out and said look at these countries do a 0.9 percent of your spending on – he embarrassed a bunch of countries.  And it set it motion a series of events that pressured our European partners to spend more on defense. 

I get it.  They’ve got these vast social safety network programs that they provide, and so every dollar you spent on military is money you’re taking away from education, health care, all the stuff that people have come to benefit from in your government.  And so these are tough decisions, but look where we are in just a few years later.  The combination of pressure from President Trump in his first administration and then a full invasion and war in Europe by Vladimir Putin has led now to virtually every country in – every single partner in the NATO Alliance pledging to get to that 5 percent mark, with the exception unfortunately of Spain, which has —

QUESTION:  What are you going to do about that?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, it’s a problem.  I mean, it’s a big problem.  They claim they can do it for less, but Spain right now has deep internal political challenges.  They have a left-of-center government that basically wants to spend very little to anything on military.  And they’ve been recalcitrant.  I think that’s one of the topics the leaders are going to have to confront today.  It’s unfortunate.  Spain is a country with capability and is a contributor.  I mean, they send troops, they’re training troops, and they can do certain things.  We have a presence there on the ground.  But I don’t think that the agreement that Spain has reached is sustainable, and frankly it puts them in a very tough spot with regards to their other allies and partners. 

So NATO, I think, has a chance to be – if everybody lives up to their commitment, it’s going to be a much stronger Alliance with more capable partners, and frankly allow the United States to still be a vibrant, strong member of it, the biggest member of it, but also reallocate resources to other parts of the world without taking away from the strength of the Alliance.

QUESTION:  Another big moment today, the President will be meeting with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.  Right now things only seem to be getting worse in that conflict.  Recent weeks have seen some of the deadliest attacks on Ukrainian civilians since the war broke out.   You’ve been part of these high-profile talks with Russian officials.  What more at this point is the administration doing to apply more pressure on Russia here?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, I don’t think the term is – a lot of people like to say about pressure on Russia.  Our sense of it is that the Russians are going to try to achieve in the battlefield what they have demanded in the negotiating table, which is certain territories that there are administrative lines and the like.  We think it’s going to be a lot harder for them to achieve that than they think it’s going to be. 

The truth is that in this year alone, since January, over 80,000 Russian troops have been killed, just since January.  I think you compare that to the Ukrainian numbers are far less.  So the death ratio is very bad, but Putin keeps feeding into their war machine.  We’d like this conflict to end.  It’s bloody, it’s destructive, it’s nonsensical.  But nonetheless, they have not shown a willingness to move forward.

So we’re going to continue to engage.  The President is going to continue to engage.  Look, the President —

QUESTION:  Will he?  Because he said before he might – he might walk away.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, engage in the sense that if there’s an opportunity for us to make a difference and get them to the table, we’re going to take it.  He wants to see this war end. 

A lot of people are saying put on more sanctions.  Now, Congress is working on that.  Lindsay Graham has a bill —

QUESTION:  Yeah.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  — and others.  And that may happen.  We’ve talked to them about how to frame it, how to structure it, because ultimately we think it needs to have enough flexibility for the President to be able to impose sanctions.  And we haven’t taken off any of the sanctions that we have on.  All the Russian sanctions are still in place.

I think what everybody has to remember, however, is that the minute we impose sanctions on Russia, if we did what everybody here wants us to do, and that is come in and crush them with more sanctions, we’d probably lose our ability to talk to them about the ceasefire, and then who’s talking to them?  Because they don’t talk  to anybody else in Europe.  They don’t talk to anybody else in the world who is on our side of this thing and views it the way we do. 

So I don’t think – the President will know the right time and place in which he’ll – may have to do that.  He has said he may have to do that.  But if he does it, you’re almost admitting that this is not going to be negotiated anytime soon, so he wants to give it every opportunity to have influence over the Russian Federation towards a ceasefire.  And that’s the option he’s trying to preserve because it’s the option of peace.

QUESTION:  One thing I find remarkable about this administration is the ideological diversity of President Trump’s cabinet.  And I’m curious if you could bring us into the room for a moment about sort of the breadth of opinion, especially on this issue but in general.  You have a range from hawks to isolationists.  Like where do you see yourself on that, and what are those conversations like on the inside? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  No.  Well, on the inside there’s only one President of the United States.  I almost – I find it curious when people argue as if somehow this is some coalition government and we all get a vote.  There’s only one vote here.  The President of the United States is the commander-in-chief.

QUESTION:  I do know he likes to hear a diversity of opinions, right?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, that’s different.  So people will give you their opinions.

QUESTION:  Yeah.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  And obviously you can give opinions and – but ultimately, there’s only one decision.  And so our job internally is to provide the President the best opinions that we may have, the best ideas that we might have, opportunities, and also, if somebody is bringing up information that we think is not accurate, challenge the accuracy – things of this nature.

QUESTION:  Is there healthy debate? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  One of the great things is that most of the people, at least on the national security front, have known each other for a long time.  I’ve known John Ratcliffe for a very long time.  I’ve known the Vice President for a very long time.  I’ve known the Chief of Staff for a very long time.  I’ve known Pete Hegseth before all of this.  So we’ve known each other all, and so we have a very good working relationship.  Steve Witkoff is from Miami.  I know him very well.  Well, he’s from New York but we obviously are – everyone from New York is now from Miami.

QUESTION:  Yeah, Miami connection.  The Miami-New York connection is pretty tight these days.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  And – and one of the great people in the world, too.  And so I think – but ultimately, once the President makes a decision, his instincts are uncanny, and we have to appreciate that that’s one of the things the people of the United States voted for is a President who has incredible instincts about the right thing to do.  And our job is to operationalize that.  When he says this is the direction I want to go, our job is not to spend all day trying to change his mind.  Once he’s made a decision, our job is to go out and make sure the President’s orders are executed on.  That’s the way administrations work.

When administrations fail is when you’re filled or surrounded by people who don’t agree with you, and so no matter what the president orders, spend their time trying to undermine him.  We have a President who’s been elected.  He’s been – very clearly – I mean, as clear as anyone who’s ever been elected – outlined how – what his views are on everything, including foreign policy.  That’s what the people of our country voted for.  That’s how our republic works.  And our job is to go out and operationalize, execute on the President’s vision based on really uncanny instincts. 

QUESTION:  Well, and I think that’s one of the reasons that you have been given quite a lot of roles in this administration.  Look, no offense to these guys, but I have seen the before-and-after pictures of Secretary of State Blinken and former NSA Jake Sullivan.  They don’t look so hot at the end of all of this.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, how encouraging. 

QUESTION:  And they were each doing one of those jobs.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  I mean, there are a lot of people that are saying how on earth are you wearing these two hats, and what are the tradeoffs that you have to think about? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  There really isn’t.  I mean, in many cases you end up being in the same meetings or in the same places; there’s just one less person in there, if you think about it.  The two jobs really do overlap in many cases.  Obviously, there’s the function of running the agency of the Department of State, but what I find myself in many cases doing is when someone – a lot of people would come to Washington, for example, for meetings and they’d want to meet with the National Security Advisor and then meet with me as Secretary of State.  Now they can do both in one meeting.  The same with when we’re around the table, for example, in the Situation Room.  There was a chair for the National Security Council and one for the State Department; now they’re both there.  You know what —

QUESTION:  Are you doing more time at the White House than traveling abroad?  Like where —

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, when there’s a conflict, yeah.

QUESTION:  Yeah.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  I mean, and so what we’ve had over the last couple weeks is we’ve known that there might be something breaking out in the Middle East, and then we had to manage our role in it.  So yeah, you spend more time there in that regard.  But I go to the State Department almost every day because we have a lot of bilateral meetings with foreign ministers that are coming to town, so I go and see them over there.  But it’s pretty seamless.

QUESTION:  Well, and the NSC has changed a lot under you.  And I think a lot of people know what the Secretary of State role is, but how do you envision – what does the Marco Rubio NSC look like?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, it’s not the Marco Rubio NSC.  It’s the Donald Trump NSC.  And what – its job is to coordinate the agencies to execute the President’s mission.  So it’s the conductor of an orchestra.  The NSC doesn’t play the clarinet or the flute or the violin.  It’s job as the conductor is to make sure that everybody is playing the sheet music based on their instrument.  And so you coordinate the different elements of our government depending on the issue, the national security issue. 

So if it’s, in this case, what’s happening over the last couple weeks, it’s making sure the Department of Defense, the Department of Treasury, the Justice Department, all the different elements of government are represented around the table and each of them have a piece or something they’re supposed to be executing on and are doing their part.  But ultimately the ideas and the execution comes from the individual agencies.  The job of the National Security Council is just to coordinate that to ensure that all of the agencies are working together and doing their part of the broader strategic plan.

And so in our – and we have a great team at State too, so it kind of works seamlessly.  It’s gone – it’s worked very well so far, and I think the outcome proves it here with regards to what we’ve seen with Israel and Iran.

QUESTION:  And on that metaphor, I’ll let you go to your conducting.  Thank you so much, Secretary. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.

QUESTION:  We really appreciate it.

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.