Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would be willing to meet Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, underscoring the administration's preference for diplomacy even as tensions rise across multiple fronts. "Nation states need to interact with one another — I serve under a President that's willing to meet with anybody," Rubio told Bloomberg in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
"I'm pretty confident in saying that if the Ayatollah said tomorrow he wanted to meet with President Trump, the President would meet him, not because he agrees with the Ayatollah, but because he thinks that's the way you solve problems in the world."
Rubio called Trump's recent decision to send a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East as a move to ensure Iran does not "come after us and trigger something larger beyond that," declining to say whether Washington was running out of patience with Tehran. He said Trump's preference remained a negotiated deal.
The remarks came as Rubio sought to reassure European allies of Washington's commitment to the continent, even as he urged them to recommit to what he described as shared Western traditions and values.
"We want Europe to prosper because we're interconnected in so many different ways, and because our alliance is so critical," Rubio said. "But it has to be an alliance of allies that are capable and willing to fight for who they are and what's important."
"What is it that binds us together? Ultimately, it's the fact that we are both heirs to the same civilisation, and it's a great civilisation," he added. "It's one we should be proud of."
His comments expanded on a speech delivered earlier in the day in Munich, which struck a more measured tone than remarks made at the conference a year ago by Vice President JD Vance. Still, Rubio echoed the administration's nationalist message, warning that the United States had no interest "in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline."
He criticized what he called "an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies" and pointed to the West's "shared history, Christian faith," culture and language. At the same time, he emphasized common security and cultural ties between the United States and Western Europe, invoking figures as varied as Michelangelo and the Rolling Stones — and even joking about American beer.
"The alliance has to change," Rubio said in the interview. "When we come off as urgent or even critical about decisions that Europe has failed to make or made, it is because we care."
Strains in the transatlantic relationship have deepened over the past year, with disputes over tariffs, Trump's renewed threat to take over Greenland, and a National Security Strategy released late last year warning of Europe's "civilisational erasure."
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