Marco Rubio on Iran:

We can't have a world in which only Iranian ships get through the straits.

If they are going to shut down the straits for everybody, we are going to shut down the straits for them.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

We are in talks—and I say talks because talks with Iran are not like talks with Switzerland, okay? They're very different. They require the use of intermediaries, unfortunately.

But there is the prospect before us, which could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, that for the first time, certainly in my memory, they have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that, just a month ago, just a year ago, they were refusing to even mention, much less enter into discussions about.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

Iran is firing on commercial ships, and they have mined large segments of Hormuz.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

There wouldn't have been a blockade if Iran had done what they said they would do when the ceasefire started. They were going to open the straits.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

There isn't a country on Earth, other than Iran—and maybe Oman, which flirted with it—that is in favor of what Iran is doing in the straits.

The Chinese are against it. The Russians are against it. Everyone is against it.

Marco Rubio says the U.S. will not give sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The pilot of the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down over Iran on April 3 was also aboard one of three F-15Es mistakenly downed by a Kuwaiti F/A-18 in a friendly-fire incident less than five weeks earlier.

Source: The High Side

Marco Rubio says there are indications that Mojtaba Khamenei is alive and becoming increasingly involved in decision-making.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

It's pretty clear that at the outset of hostilities in the conflict, they had delegated decision-making to field commanders.

And so oftentimes, field commanders had delegated authority to act on, let's say, pre-operational planning that had already been put in place.

And so, unlike our system, where perhaps the president, the secretary of war, or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is directly making orders and decisions, in their system a lot of decision-making at the tactical level—like which ships to hit and so forth—is being made at the commander level.

Marco Rubio:

There's been no change to U.S. policy toward Taiwan.

I think, obviously, the Chinese side would like to see a change, but no change has been made in that regard.

Marco Rubio on Taiwan:

We want to see the status quo preserved. That is our policy.

Marco Rubio:

NATO will be a fun meeting...

Senator Daines spends a minute praising Rubio and Trump for helping achieve peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Marco Rubio on Armenia:

The Russians are less than happy about our engagement in Armenia.

I think there is evidence that they would like the current president to lose his election as a result of this growing relationship with the U.S.

Marco Rubio on NATO:

If what we get out of NATO is the ability to use bases, and then we have members of that alliance that are basically denying the use of those bases in a contingency, it calls into question the entire thing.

Trump signed a scaled-back AI cybersecurity executive order.

The order asks AI companies to voluntarily submit powerful new models for government review 30 days before public release, down from a proposed 90-day review period.

Marco Rubio on Iran:

Iran did not get 50 billion dollars directly as a result of the oil sanction waiver; they might have gotten some of it, but they didn't get the majority of it.

Marco Rubio:

We are not begging Iran for anything.

Iranians might be begging.

Marco Rubio:

Iranian people would make a deal tomorrow if it were up to them.

The Supreme Leader and the IRGC are a bit more immune to pressures.

Marco Rubio:

Some of our allies in the region have been very aggressively cooperative, like the UAE.

Marco Rubio:

India-Pakistan, we ended that war; we were involved in helping broker that.