The most telling absence from the latest round of United States-Iran nuclear negotiations has been that of the man nominally charged with leading American diplomacy. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State who also serves as National Security Advisor, was nowhere to be seen when President Donald Trump dispatched his son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Islamabad for critical talks. Vice-President JD Vance has led previous rounds. That the chief diplomat of the United States has twice skipped the Iranian file — the administration’s most consequential foreign crisis — has not gone unnoticed in Washington or abroad. Viewed from Tehran, the message is unmistakable: the White House is sidelining its own state department in favour of ad-hoc family envoys, a pattern that echoes the unstructured deal-making of the first Trump term but carries graver risks when military confrontation looms.

Rubio’s dual hat as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor has been derided in internet memes as “Secretary of Everything”, yet his effective invisibility on Iran suggests a deliberate choice rather than bureaucratic overload. Stephen Walt, a Harvard professor of international relations, told the Financial Times that Rubio “may already feel Iran is a complete failure and the less he is associated with it, the better”. That assessment finds support in Rome, where La Repubblica reports that the Republican Party is already sketching a midterm campaign that does not repudiate Trump’s policies but distances itself from his person — and that Rubio is quietly positioning for a 2028 presidential bid. Focus groups of Trump voters tracked by the Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell reveal a “strange new respect” for Rubio, even as Vice-President Vance draws increasing criticism. The implication is clear: in the fevered calculations of the Republican right, distance from a unpopular war is becoming an asset.

Rubio’s marginalisation also reflects a deeper shift in Trump’s decision-making style. Analysts in London note that the president appears to favour rapid military interventions over painstaking diplomacy, and that a State Department weakened by staffing cuts and the concentration of power in the West Wing is no longer the natural home for nuclear talks. Where John Kerry once led the marathon negotiations that produced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, his Republican successor is conspicuously absent. For Rubio, the calculus is long-term. By letting Kushner and Witkoff absorb the reputational damage of a crisis that shows no signs of resolution, he preserves his own name for a future White House run. Whether that strategy survives the next escalation in the Gulf will depend on whether the war becomes the defining failure of Trump’s second term — and whether the Secretary of Everything can remain the man who was never quite there.