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Secretary Rubio Remarks to the Press in Manila on Ukraine and Iran, Jul. 23, 2026

July 23, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:32:03

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

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took questions from the press in Manila, Philippines, on July 23, 2026 — one of two press availabilities he gave that day, paged separately on this site. Asked whether he had made progress on Ukraine, he answered with a caution about the setting: “You think we settled the war in Ukraine in our 30 minutes here in Asia? That’s not the way it works.” The conversation had been good and frank, he said, but “diplomacy doesn’t work well when you run to the microphones afterwards”; the United States, as the President has stated, is prepared to play a constructive role in ending what he called a senseless war.

He pushed back hard on reporting that Russia and China are sharing targeting information with Iran — “Who says that they are?” — arguing that nothing anyone is doing has increased Iran’s ability to target Americans, and describing an Iranian missile and drone build-up, over the better part of 20 years, that Tehran had intended to double. Later he defended the administration’s posture toward the International Criminal Court — “they’re not going to apply their jurisdiction to Americans” — and, asked about the Russian Foreign Ministry’s account of his meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov, answered: “I know what happened in our meeting.”

Why it matters

The Manila gaggle is message discipline as method: on Ukraine, Iran, and the ICC in a single half-hour, the Secretary declined operational detail, contested press sourcing on the record, and restated the administration’s lines without moving them — the press record of the ASEAN-week stop, against which later movement can be measured.

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