When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear take care of Iran greater than a decade in the past, his level man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met along with his Iranian counterpart on at the very least 18 totally different days, typically a number of occasions per day.
Excessive-level nuclear diplomacy was a pure position for the highest U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state historically take the lead on the nation’s greatest diplomatic duties, from arms management treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
However as President Trump prepares to ship a delegation to the most recent spherical of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will stay the place he typically does: at house.
Mr. Rubio didn’t attend the final U.S. assembly with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he be part of a number of conferences held over the previous 12 months in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has additionally been absent from U.S. delegations overseas working to settle the conflict in Ukraine and Israel’s conflict in Gaza. Regardless of a protracted interval of disaster and conflict within the area, he has not visited the Center East since a short cease in Israel final October.
In current months, Mr. Rubio — consumed along with his second position, as Mr. Trump’s nationwide safety adviser — has not traveled a lot in any respect.
Throughout the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 overseas journeys from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. To this point this 12 months, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign citiestogether with a cease in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Mr. Trump has outsourced a lot of his diplomacy to others, together with his pal Steve Witkoff, a rich affiliate from the world of Manhattan actual property, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have spearheaded diplomacy with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, in addition to Iran, whose delegation they’ll meet for the second time this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
Mr. Rubio’s distance from the trenches of diplomacy displays his twin position on Mr. Trump’s nationwide safety staff. For the previous 12 months, he has served because the White Home nationwide safety adviser even whereas main the State Division — the primary individual to take action since Henry A. Kissinger within the mid-Nineteen Seventies.
The secretary of state runs the State Division, overseeing U.S. diplomats and embassies worldwide, in addition to Washington-based policymakers. Working from the White Home, the nationwide safety adviser coordinates departments and businesses, together with the State Division, to develop coverage recommendation for the president.
The dual roles replicate Mr. Rubio’s affect with Mr. Trump, and supply him a method to preserve it. For Mr. Rubio, much less time overseas means extra time along side an impulsive president inclined to creating vital nationwide safety selections at any second.
As Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner and Vice President JD Vance met with Iranian officers in Pakistan earlier this month, Mr. Rubio was at Mr. Trump’s side at an Ultimate Fighting Championship eventfamous Emma Ashford, an analyst of U.S. diplomacy on the nonpartisan Stimson Middle in Washington. “Rubio clearly prefers to remain near Trump,” Ms. Ashford mentioned.
Mr. Rubio accepted the nationwide safety adviser job on an performing foundation final Could after Mr. Trump reassigned the job’s earlier occupant, Michael Waltz. However officers say that Mr. Rubio is predicted to maintain it indefinitely.
That association isn’t inherently dangerous, Ms. Ashford added. And she or he famous that earlier presidents had entrusted main diplomatic duties to folks apart from the secretary of state. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delegated his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to deal with diplomacy with Russia and cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, as an illustration.
However she echoed the complaints by many present and former diplomats that Mr. Rubio appears much less like somebody performing each jobs than a nationwide safety adviser who generally reveals up on the State Division. “I do suppose it’s to the detriment of the entire division of State and to America’s potential to conduct diplomacy normally that we successfully have the secretary of state place sitting vacant,” she mentioned.
Tommy Pigott, a State Division spokesman, contested such claims. “Anybody making an attempt to color Secretary Rubio’s shut coordination with the White Home and different businesses as a destructive couldn’t be extra incorrect,” he mentioned. “We now have an N.S.C. and State Division which can be completely in sync, a aim that has eluded previous administrations for many years.”
Mr. Rubio divides his time between the State Division and the White Home, typically spending time at each in the identical day. In an interview with Politico last JuneMr. Rubio mentioned he visited the State Division “nearly every single day.”
Whereas there, he typically meets with visiting dignitaries earlier than returning to the White Home. Final week, Mr. Rubio presided over a gathering on the State Division between Lebanese and Israeli officers that set the stage for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
His twin jobs “actually do overlap in lots of circumstances,” he mentioned. “In lots of circumstances you find yourself being in the identical conferences or in the identical locations; there’s only one much less individual in there, if you concentrate on it,” Mr. Rubio added. “Lots of people would come to Washington, for instance, for conferences, they usually’d wish to meet with the nationwide safety adviser after which meet with me as secretary of state. Now they’ll do each in a single assembly.”
Requested about his journey schedule throughout a information convention final December, Mr. Rubio mentioned he had much less motive to journey overseas as a result of “we now have a variety of leaders continually coming right here” to go to Mr. Trump on the White Home. Mr. Rubio additionally joins Mr. Trump’s overseas journeys in his capability as nationwide safety adviser.
Many nationwide safety veterans name the association unwise, saying that each jobs are extraordinarily demanding and incompatible with each other.
It was not straightforward even for Mr. Kissinger, who had firmly established himself over greater than 4 years as nationwide safety adviser earlier than convincing President Richard M. Nixon to let him tackle an extra position as secretary of state in 1973. (In a reversal of Mr. Rubio’s strategy, Mr. Kissinger was in fixed movement, together with a spherical of Center East shuttle diplomacy that kept him on the road for 33 straight days.)
“Generally, it’s a mistake to mix these roles,” mentioned Matthew Waxman, who held senior roles on the Nationwide Safety Council, State Division and the Pentagon through the George W. Bush administration.
“That mentioned, it’s not essentially a foul factor {that a} dual-hatted Rubio is so offscreen proper now,” Mr. Waxman added. “Particularly whereas a lot consideration is concentrated on high-wire diplomacy with Iran, somebody must handle overseas coverage round the remainder of the world.”
