Can Rubio save Trump’s Iran deal?

Opinion>Opinions - White House The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill Can Rubio save Trump’s Iran deal? Comments: by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 06/24/26 8:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Max Burns, opinion contributor - 06/24/26 8:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

Associated Press FILE – Secretary of State Marco Rubio stands behind as President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on Air Force One while in flight from Joint Base Andrews, Md., to Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)

For a guy who likes to think of himself as a conservative intellectual, leading the Department of State should have been a career-defining moment for Marco Rubio. It’s not for nothing that the State Department once had the reputation of being the world’s most illustrious diplomatic corps, the engine of America’s soft power abroad, a consequential stepping stone to the presidency.

Not so under President Trump, who has spent much of his two terms in office dismantling the department’s core functions and reducing the government’s foreign policy powerhouse into a passive lapdog for his directionless and self-destructive global agenda.

Not only is Rubio an absentee secretary of State, he presides over a department that is a shadow of its former self. More than 2,000 career diplomats have been laid off or forced out in Trump’s second term so far. Add in Trump’s first term, and the State Department has shed roughly 20 percent of its workforce.

Rubio’s absence from the grown-ups table has opened him up to embarrassing moments of disconnect with the president he serves — most notably on the Iran war, where the hawkish Rubio never had Trump’s ear. Now Rubio has been dispatched to do the humiliating work of selling America’s Gulf allies on a peace deal he doesn’t seem to support and played almost no role in negotiating.

This can’t be the way Rubio saw his time at State playing out.

In many ways, Rubio is in an unwinnable position. Early on, Trump entrusted the sensitive negotiations with Iran to family and close friends, namely presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff made a predictable hash of the job while cutting deals that bolstered their private business interests. Their diplomacy arguably made more progress for the pair’s future foreign real estate developments than it did in ending the Iran war in America’s favor. If Kushner and Witkoff’s craven self-dealing bothered the secretary of State, Rubio did a great job keeping his frustrations quiet.

Now that Trump has debuted a peace deal that looks more like a surrender than the sweeping victory he promised the American people, congressional Republicans are entering full-on panic mode. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) on Monday called on Rubio to step in and lead negotiations with Iran if Vice President JD Vance and the Kushner-Witkoff brain trust tank the deal. Sheehy, it seems, is worried enough that he’s willing to plan publicly for failure. Knowing the players involved, that’s a reasonable worry.

“I think having Marco off to the side, of course, to have round two, should this fail, and we have to go back to kinetic strikes and go back for another round, would be good, probably to have a different face in the room for that second round,” Sheehy told reporters.

Republicans’ sudden interest in bringing Rubio out of the shadows highlights just how poorly Trump’s Iran war is going, and how aware many Republican lawmakers are that Trump’s humiliating deal will be politically toxic on the midterm campaign trail. A full two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict, according to a national poll released this week.

Worse still, a growing number of Republican leaders are convinced that Trump’s deal hands too much to the Iranian regime while securing nothing for America in return. Upon reading details of the draft agreement, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) remarked that Ronald Reagan is “rolling over in his grave” at Trump’s decision to lift decades of sanctions against Tehran’s brutal and repressive regime. Recent polls show plenty of Republican-leaning voters feel the same way. If this is the best deal Trump can get, Republicans fear, peace may prove far costlier than the war.

Enter Rubio — maybe. The secretary of State is loath to take the helm of Trump’s actively crumbling negotiations, especially when his main political rival, Vance, is on deck to take the blame for the Iran deal’s frosty reception back home. After a year and a half spent watching Trump’s inner circle sideline and weaken the State Department at every turn, Rubio may soon be faced with a nearly impossible task: actually doing his job.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.