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Secretary Rubio Takes Questions from the Press in Kuwait City, Jun. 24, 2026

June 24, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:11:40

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

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took questions from the press in Kuwait City, Kuwait, on June 24, 2026, during his Gulf tour following the Switzerland talks with Iran. Asked what reassurances he had given the Gulf states, he answered that none were needed in words: “We have troop presence in these countries. We have assets in these countries… They’re not promises; they’re actual. They exist.” Decisions on the negotiation, he said, would be made aligned with Gulf partners — “we’re not going to do anything that undermines the security of our allies” — and he predicted the Gulf Cooperation Council, meeting the next day, would join the world in rejecting any Iranian mechanism to charge for transit through the Strait of Hormuz: “When we mean open the straits, we mean open the straits free.”

On the waiver of oil sanctions against Iran, granted that Monday, he was explicit about its terms: “For 60 days.” It is “a temporary measure” of give-and-take, and “as a result, we expect them to live up to the commitments they made in Switzerland. If they don’t live up to those commitments, the President has a lot of options at his disposal, including… reversing these sanctions.” Nuclear inspectors, he said, should be allowed into Iran “as soon as possible” — a commitment Iran made “and it’s one they need to keep.” He said the technical negotiating group would reconvene in Switzerland around June 30, in his belief, working in separate streams. On Lebanon, he described the Washington talks’ goal — the Lebanese Armed Forces securing territory in “pilot zones,” one defined area at a time — and said Israel’s presence in Lebanon exists only because Hezbollah launches rockets and drones from there. Wrongfully detained Americans, he said, remain “our highest priority,” without discussion of specific cases; new waivers for Russian oil, he said, could potentially be dropped as prices fall.

Why it matters

The Kuwait availability is the conditional-waiver doctrine stated on the record in a Gulf capital mid-negotiation: sanctions relief as a 60-day, revocable instrument, paired with the pilot-zones account of the Lebanon process — the terms against which the summer’s Iran file can be read.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the 60-day Iran oil-sanctions waiver and its stated conditions, and the technical-talks resumption date (around June 30, 2026, as the Secretary stated it), both fixed on the record June 24, 2026. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio’s Remarks to the Press in Kuwait” (official upload, embedded above; Kuwait City, Kuwait). Remarks as delivered; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store; full transcript at state.gov.