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Secretary Rubio Signs a Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation MOU with Paraguay, Aug. 4, 2026

August 4, 2026 · U.S. Department of State · 0:08:10

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What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a Memorandum of Understanding for strategic civil nuclear cooperation with Paraguayan Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano at the Department of State on August 4, 2026. Speaking in English and Spanish before the signing, Rubio framed the agreement as institution-building: the relationship, he said, has grown “on a historic scale” over the past year and a half, and agreements like this one are meant to make those ties “enduring” — able to “survive the shifts in political winds that happen in democracies.”

After the signing, Rubio took questions on Haiti — progress there is slower than all would want, he said, but “the needle is pointing in the right direction” — and on Iran, where he distinguished two tracks: “the big deal,” denuclearization, since Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon,” and the immediate one, the straits, where an Oman-Iran conversation on safe passage has made progress, in his words, “but not finality yet.”

Why it matters

Paraguay is the Western Hemisphere relationship Rubio has personally championed since his Senate years, by his own account at the signing; a civil nuclear cooperation framework is the energy-security instrument of that courtship, signed at the department he leads.

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Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio and Paraguayan Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano at a Signing Ceremony” (official upload, embedded above; the Department of State). Remarks as delivered; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store; full transcript at state.gov.