Secretary of state nominee Marco Rubio sailed through his Senate confirmation hearing, drawing bipartisan praise from his former colleagues as he pledged to confront Iran’s accelerating nuclear program and provide Israel with the support it needs to finish decimating Tehran’s terror proxies.
Rubio, who until recently served as a veteran member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, returned to Congress on Wednesday to lay out his vision for America’s diplomatic corps ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week. The hearing was a largely collegial affair, with Republicans and Democrats focusing their attention on global policy challenges and bipartisan solutions.
“I believe you have the skills and are well qualified to serve as secretary of state,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), the committee’s ranking Democrat, said at the top of her remarks. Sen. Chris Coons (Del.), another senior Democratic committee member, said he looks forward to working alongside Rubio, touting their joint work on more than 60 pieces of legislation.
When Democratic critics confronted Rubio, the questions largely centered on Trump, rather than any deficit with the former Florida senator’s qualifications to serve at the State Department.
Rubio, for his part, focused his testimony on a litany of foreign challenges that include China’s global malfeasance, Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, and a burgeoning Middle East peace process following Hamas’s yearlong war on Israel. As Rubio testified, the Biden administration announced that it had secured a hostage deal with Hamas that would tentatively free the 94 remaining captives and pause the war in Gaza.
“There are opportunities available in the Middle East that did not exist 90 days ago,” Rubio said, crediting Israel with fundamentally reshaping the region by wiping out Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian terror proxies.
While Rubio did not comment directly on the ceasefire agreement, he made clear that “without the hostage situation resolved, this situation will not be resolved.”
The credit, Rubio added in bipartisan fashion, belongs to “both the Biden administration and Trump transition” team, as they “worked side by side to help this come about.”
In one rare but notable clash, Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) tried to press Rubio on accusations that Trump’s Middle East policy will be driven by the president-elect’s familial business ties in the region.
“The Trump organization is going to be signing new business deals in the Middle East … at the very moment you are going to be conducting sensitive diplomacy in these countries,” Murphy said, describing the issue as “real trouble for you and for U.S. national security interests.”
“Our foreign policy is going to be driven by whether some action is in the interest of the United States and our national security, and that’s what it’s going to be driven by,” Rubio responded.
Pivoting to Iran more broadly, Rubio took aim at the Biden-Harris administration’s lax enforcement of oil sanctions, which helped Tehran amass more than $100 billion in revenue over the past four years. He pledged to restore tough economic penalties on Iran, while also leaving room for diplomacy if the country’s hardline regime provides an opening.
“Iran and that regime is at its weakest point in recent memory and maybe ever,” Rubio said, praising Israel for an October military strike that “badly damaged” the country’s air defenses. “They’re in a lot of trouble.”
While this could create the conditions for Iran to seek a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump ended during his first term in office, Rubio said that any future negotiations would begin from a position of strength and would not allow Iran to gain nuclear capabilities.
“We should be open to any arrangement that allows us to have safety and stability in the region, but one in which we’re clear-eyed,” he said. “Any concessions we make to the Iranian regime we should anticipate that they will use, as they have used in the past, to rebuild their weapons systems and to try and restart their sponsorship of Hezbollah and other related entities.”
“What cannot be allowed under any circumstances is a nuclear-armed Iran, what cannot be allowed under any circumstances is an Iran and Iranian regime that has the resources and the capability to restart and continue their sponsorship of terrorism, and what cannot be allowed under any circumstances is an Iran with the military capability of threatening and destabilizing its neighbors,” Rubio concluded.
The U.S. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio lays down a few principles as the Europeans engage with #Iran‘s regime: what cannot be allowed under any circumstances is a nuclear-armed Iran, an Iranian regime that has the resources and capability to restart and continue their… pic.twitter.com/g7dmT8ZZ8D
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) January 15, 2025
Rubio also pledged to confront the international institutions responsible for undermining Israel’s war effort and stoking the flames of global anti-Semitism. This includes the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is facing a bevy of Trump-backed sanctions for its efforts to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges.
“The ICC has done tremendous damage to its global credibility,” Rubio said. “This is a test run. This is a trial run to see, can we go after a head of state from a nation that’s not a member. If we can go after them and get it done with regards to Israel, they will apply that to the United States at some point.”
When pressed, meanwhile, on Trump’s repeated threats to abandon NATO, Rubio said that European allies must step up to the plate and fund their own defense priorities—a response that even garnered agreement from Shaheen, a Democrat.
“The sentiment on this committee would be to agree with what you say,” she said.
When senators raised Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, Rubio backed early plans by Trump to find a political solution.
“It should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end,” Rubio said, criticizing the Biden administration for never articulating an end goal.
The outgoing administration “never clearly delineated what the end goal of the conflict was, what exactly were we funding, what exactly were we putting money towards,” he said. “On many occasions it sounded like, however much it takes for however long it takes. That is not a realistic or prudent position.”
Concerns about China’s growing military belligerence and unfair economic practices also emerged as a top agenda item for Rubio, as well as both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“If we stay on the road we’re on right now, in less than 10 years virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not,” Rubio assessed. “Everything from the blood pressure medicine we take to what movies we get to watch and everything in between we will depend on China for it.”
RUBIO: “We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order and they took advantage of all of its benefits…
Instead they have repressed, and lied, and cheated, and hacked, and stolen their way into global superpower status.” pic.twitter.com/TvGkoUvJuW
— Gabriel Noronha (@GLNoronha) January 15, 2025
The path to eroding China’s malign influence, Rubio said, starts at home with robust investments in American industry.
Rubio also pledged to oversee a more nimble State Department that is not dumping tax dollars into frivolous projects or various Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives championed by outgoing secretary of state Antony Blinken
“U.S. foreign assistance is not charity,” Rubio said. “Fealty to progressive politics became the benchmark for success. That view is diminishing very quickly.”
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