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Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks at the U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Flag Raising Ceremony, Mar. 9, 2026

March 9, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:19:44

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered remarks at the U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Flag Raising Ceremony at the Department of State on March 9, 2026 — the third U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day — alongside Special Envoy Adam Boehler and FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia. Boehler said 175 people have been brought home, over 100 of them Americans, and that Rubio had put countries on notice — Iran designated a State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention, with Russia, Afghanistan, and countries in Africa also named. Raia spoke to the case of Bob Levinson, the former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran nineteen years earlier to the day, whose family — sons Dan and Doug — attended; the flag flown that day was dedicated to the Levinson family.

Rubio honored the seven Americans killed in the opening hours of the Iran operation, restated the operation’s objectives (destroy Iran’s missile and launcher capacity, its missile factories, and its navy), and credited President Trump with making the return of unjustly detained Americans a priority “from the very first day in office”: “since his inauguration a little over a year ago, over 100 Americans have been brought home.” He argued the cycle in which Americans are treated “as a valuable commodity” to trade for concessions has to end, which is why the State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention designation exists — with Iran, designated February 27, as its first country: “when it comes to hostage taking, there has been no worse offender in the world than the clerical regime in Tehran.” He closed: “we will not stop until every single unjustly detained American is brought home.” The department’s full-session feed of the ceremony is recorded in the index as an alternate source of this page.

Why it matters

The ceremony is where the wrongful-detention designation — the administration’s deterrence instrument against hostage diplomacy — was presented publicly by the Secretary, paired with the homecoming tally and the Levinson case as its founding example.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the State Sponsor of Wrongful Detention designation of Iran (February 27, 2026) and the stated tally of over 100 Americans brought home since Inauguration Day, as presented at the March 9, 2026 ceremony. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Delivers Remarks at the U.S. Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Flag Raising Ceremony” (official upload, embedded above); transcript via state.gov as linked in the upload description. Remarks as delivered.