Secretary of State Marco Rubio closed the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta on Saturday with a wide-ranging press conference — and its biggest line was on Iran. President Trump, he said, has not decided whether to resume military strikes on Iran. "We can achieve military objectives if we seek to," Rubio said, but the president "hasn't made a decision," and "I have no announcement in that regard with you today, and nor do we take any of it lightly." If there is a diplomatic solution, he added, "we would be open to it." Iranian officials were meeting Qatari mediators in Doha on Saturday, and Rubio said he did not know whether there was a specific timeframe for the Qatar-led talks.
Rubio left no doubt about who Washington blames for the region's fires. Iran, he said, is "at the centre of instability throughout the Middle East," arming the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iraqi militias. "Iran is blowing up ships, including ships carrying, for example, Indian sailors," he said, and he repeated that Iran will never be allowed weapons of mass destruction while President Trump is in the White House. The Houthis, he said, "would not have the capabilities they have today, had it not been for the support, the direct support, of the Iranian regime."
On Russia, Rubio defended Moscow keeping its seat at the G20 table. "How can you have a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine if you don't have the ability to talk to both Russia and Ukraine?" he asked. "We talk to the Ukrainians plenty. We talk to them, as much, if not more than we talk to the Russian side, but we have to be able to talk to the Russian side." Talking to a government does not mean endorsing it, he said — and with Russia's nuclear arsenal, keeping the channel open matters. But he was blunt about the state of the peace effort: "I don't think anyone here is claiming that we're on the verge of a negotiated settlement." President Vladimir Putin has not confirmed whether he will attend the December leaders' summit in Florida, Rubio said he had spoken only briefly with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and whether Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky attends will be President Trump's decision. He also said there is growing international interest in a limited Black Sea ceasefire, and that the United States is reviewing Turkish and Indian proposals to get grain shipments moving again.
Asked whether Tuesday's elections would tie the administration's hands if Congress changes control, Rubio was dismissive. "Well, first of all, we haven't had an election yet. So we don't know what Congress will look like," he said. A different Congress "won't influence or change the President's directives in terms of what he was elected to do": Congress has a role "primarily in the funding and the appropriations and in the oversight function," but "ultimately the foreign policy decisions are made by the executive branch."
Rubio also confirmed that President Trump is willing to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un again if the talks can produce a positive result — while stressing that no meeting is planned. "I have no announcement to make on this today," he said, adding that meeting a leader is not a concession or an endorsement. And he confirmed the shape of the meeting Trump wanted: climate change was not on the United States' agenda in Atlanta, because the president directed the U.S. G20 presidency to refocus the forum on its core economic mandate — energy, technology and supply chains.
For Americans, the through-line of the whole press conference is steadiness: no new war has been decided, the sea lanes that carry the world's food and fuel stay at the centre of U.S. policy, and the foreign policy voters elected in Washington will not be rewritten by whoever holds Congress after Tuesday.
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