Marco Rubio is many things — calculating, disciplined, fluent in the language of policy seriousness. He’s the guy who reads the room and adjusts accordingly. He’s not the cabinet’s chaos agent. He’s the one who’s supposed to sound like an adult.
So when Rubio showed up to Capitol Hill on Monday looking like a man explaining to a cop why his car is on fire, people noticed.
Let’s establish a baseline. This is not a secretary of state who normally sprints toward the exits of coherence. Even in the Trump orbit, where the bar for credibility sits roughly at ankle height, Rubio has historically managed to keep his composure and his story straight. He speaks in complete sentences. He cites things. He sounds, compared to his colleagues, something approaching trustworthy.
What we got on Monday — and again on Tuesday — was something else.
The gaggle began with Rubio announcing that there was no confusion, which is exactly what a person says when everything is profoundly confused. “I don’t understand what the confusion is,” he told reporters outside the Capitol. “Let me explain it to you, and I’ll do it once again as clearly as possible. Perhaps you’ll report it that way.” That last sentence — that little sharp edge of blame aimed at the people asking questions — is the tell. Men who have clear answers don’t tell reporters to try harder.
He then offered what he presented as a clean, simple objective: destroy Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and naval capability. Done. Clear. No confusion.
Except that by the time he finished talking, he had also said the operation might include the use of ground forces (Trump wouldn’t “rule anything out”), that regime change was not the goal but would be welcome, that the Iranian people should rise up and take their country back, that this is not a so-called regime change war but the regime sure did change, and that the hardest hits are yet to come. He said he didn’t know how long it would take. He said they had objectives. He said those objectives would be achieved, as long as it takes.
That is not one story. That is at least five stories wearing a trench coat.
Then came the bomb that blew open the MAGA coalition’s own fault line: Rubio confirmed, on the record, that the United States joined this war because Israel was going to attack Iran with or without American involvement, and the U.S. had to act first to minimize American casualties from the inevitable Iranian retaliation. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he said. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
Read that again slowly. The “imminent threat” that justified Operation Epic Fury — the legal and moral hook on which this entire enterprise hangs — was not Iran planning to attack us. It was Iran planning to retaliate against us after Israel hit them. That is not imminent threat doctrine. That is joining a war already in progress and calling it self-defense.
The Pentagon, for what it’s worth, had already quietly told congressional staffers that Iran was not planning to strike American forces unless attacked first. The Saturday background briefing that said otherwise was wrong. Rubio’s Monday briefing confirmed as much, through the side door.
Congress heard. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walked out of the classified briefing and told reporters flatly: “I found their answers completely and totally insufficient. That briefing raised many more questions than it answered.” He did not take questions. There wasn’t a lot else to say.
Now here’s where things get genuinely disorienting, and why Rubio’s energy on Monday registered as something more than just political spin management. By Tuesday morning, Rubio was back — posting video, briefing more lawmakers, this time the full House — operating at the same high-rev frequency. And what he was selling had already been contradicted by the man at the top.
On Tuesday, in the Oval Office with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Delusional Don looked at the cameras and said something that dismantled the central premise of everything Rubio had been explaining for 24 hours. Rubio had told the world the U.S. joined the Israeli plan because Israel was going to move regardless. Trump told the Oval Office pool: “No, I might have forced their hand.”
Might have forced their hand. The president of the United States, sitting next to the chancellor of Germany, casually suggested that it was, in fact, he who pushed Israel forward — not the other way around. “I think they were going to attack first,” Trump continued, referring to Iran. “And I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand, but Israel was ready and we were ready.”
So: according to Rubio, Israel was going to act and we had no choice but to go first. According to Trump, we might have pushed Israel into it. According to the Pentagon briefing, Iran was not planning to attack anyone unless provoked. According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, this is not a regime change war. According to Trump, regime change would be wonderful. According to Hegseth, they destroyed the navy and the missiles, full stop. According to Rubio, ground troops are not off the table. According to Trump, the war will last four to five weeks. Or far longer. Wars can be fought “forever,” he wrote on Truth Social. Quite successfully.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut put it plainly: “The president has been all over the place. He’s in effect workshopping a war.”
That is not a partisan attack. That is a description of observable events.
We are four days into a shooting war with Iran — a country of 90 million people, with proxy networks across the Middle East, now actively firing on U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere. Six American service members are already dead. Hundreds of Iranian civilians are dead, including 160 people killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school that the Pentagon says it is still investigating. The region’s commercial airspace is a patchwork of closed skies. Oil prices are climbing. And the people running this operation cannot agree on what the operation is for.
That’s the story behind the mania. It’s not a personality quirk. It’s what it looks like when you’re defending something that doesn’t have a coherent defense yet, and you’re smart enough to know it, and you’re still going to try.
Nothing about what brought Americans to this moment — a war started without evacuation planning, with no plan for the day after, explained differently by every official who’s been asked — is inevitable. This is the consequence of workshopping a war in real time while people are stranded in hotel rooms listening to interceptor blasts overhead. Someone made these decisions. Their names are in the record.
And the next time Secretary Rubio tells you there’s no confusion, look at his hands.
If You Are an American Stranded in the Middle East
The following information is provided without editorial comment. These are the steps the State Department has directed Americans to take.
The State Department has issued a “Depart Now” advisory for Americans in the following countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Americans in these countries are urged to depart using available commercial transportation.
The State Department 24/7 emergency hotline number is 1-202-501-4444.
Americans abroad are urged to enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) at step.state.gov to receive the latest updates from U.S. embassies and consulates in their area.
The State Department is also providing updates via its WhatsApp channel and social media accounts. You can follow @StateDept on X/Twitter and @travelgov on multiple platforms for the latest security alerts.
As of Tuesday, a senior State Department official confirmed that U.S. evacuation flights are underway, though specific country details are not being released due to security considerations. Americans who have been unable to reach a representative by phone are encouraged to try again, and to follow the State Department’s social media channels for updates as they become available.
If you are in Iran, Turkey and Armenia have been cited as possible overland departure routes where circumstances allow.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has advised Americans in Iraq to shelter in place until further notice. The Embassy in Amman, Jordan has evacuated its own personnel. Check the State Department’s country-specific alerts for the most current guidance.
**Unfugginbelievable is an independent, reader-supported investigation into the things that make us want to flip a table — then flip it back over and document everything on it. Every claim is fact-checked. Every source is real. No ads, no sponsors, no corporate overlords telling us what to leave out. If this work matters to you and you want to keep us caffeinated while we do it, buy us a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unfugginbelievable. We’ll drink it while reading the next filing.**
Add comment
Comments