U.S. Secretary of ​State Marco Rubio spoke with both Lebanese President ‌Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ​Netanyahu on the diplomatic ⁠negotiations between Israel and Lebanon and has proposed a plan to allow for “gradual de-escalation,” a U.S. ‌official said on Sunday (May 31, 2026).

West Asia war: Follow LIVE updates on June 1, 2026

The U.S. has proposed that as a ‌first step, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group ‌would ⁠stop all attacks on Israel and ⁠in return Israel would refrain from escalation in Beirut, the official said.

“This would create space for gradual ​de-escalation and an effective ‌cessation of hostilities,” according to the official.

The official added that Mr. Aoun tried to advance the proposal and secure an agreement. ‌However, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who ​claimed to “guarantee” Hezbollah’s commitment to a ceasefire, placed the burden on ⁠Israel to stop “shooting first.”

Mr. Netanyahu had said on Sunday (May 31, 2026) that he ordered troops to ‌move further into Lebanon in the battle against Hezbollah, despite a ceasefire announced more than six weeks ago.

In the latest advance, Israeli troops seized the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle and a strategic ridge in ‌southern Lebanon, the military said earlier on Sunday (May 31, 2026), a ​day after one of the heaviest days of Hezbollah fire toward northern ⁠Israel since the April ceasefire, prompting school closures ⁠and restrictions.

The U.S. official said that the U.S. did not ‌expect Israel to absorb ongoing attacks on its civilians from Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will arrive in India on Saturday (May 23, 2026) for a maiden four-day visit, aimed at repairing bilateral ties that have been under strain since mid-last year.

The top U.S. diplomat is scheduled to hold wide-ranging talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, in addition to meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attending a meeting of the Quad Foreign Ministers in New Delhi.

The U.S. Secretary of State will arrive in Kolkata at 7 a.m. on Saturday (May 23, 2026). After attending an event there, Mr. Rubio will fly to New Delhi to call on Prime Minister Modi in the afternoon.

On Sunday (May 24, 2026), he is scheduled for bilateral talks with Mr. Jaishankar and will attend the U.S. Embassy’s Independence Day celebrations.

Mr. Rubio will travel to Agra and Jaipur on Monday (May 25, 2026) before returning to Delhi on Tuesday (May 26, 2026 morning for the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting.

“There’s a lot to work on with India, they’re a great ally and partner. We do a lot of good work with them, so this is an important trip,” Mr. Rubio said on Friday (May 22, 2026) about his trip to India.

Ways to bolster India-U.S. ties in energy, trade, investment, critical technology, and people-to-people exchanges are likely to dominate the talks between Mr. Jaishankar and Mr. Rubio, people familiar with the matter said.

The two sides are also expected to deliberate on the West Asia crisis and its economic impact, including on energy supplies, they said.

Mr. Rubio’s trip to India comes more than five weeks after Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri undertook a three-day visit to Washington DC that focused on stabilising the ties after a spell of uncertainty and strain.

The relations between the two countries witnessed a major downturn after Washington imposed punitive tariffs on India and President Donald Trump made controversial assertions regarding his role in de-escalating the India-Pakistan military clashes last May.

Over the next few months, the U.S. president repeatedly and publicly claimed that he had resolved the military conflict between the two neighbours and saved millions of lives as it was going in the direction of a full-scale war.

New Delhi stoutly maintained that the cessation of the hostilities was the result of talks between India and Pakistan, and the U.S. involvement had nothing to do with it.

Washington’s new immigration policy and its decision to increase the H1B visa fee also contributed to the slide in India-U.S. ties.

However, both sides made efforts in the last few months to repair the ties. The two sides have resolved to firm up a mutually beneficial trade deal soon.

President Trump and Prime Minister Modi on April 14 held a nearly 40-minute phone conversation.

Following the call, Mr. Modi said he and Mr. Trump reviewed the “substantial progress” in the bilateral ties and that both sides are committed to further strengthening the India-U.S. comprehensive global strategic partnership in “all areas”.

It is learnt that India and the U.S. will carry out a comprehensive review of their ties during Mr. Rubio’s visit and focus on boosting the overall trajectory of the relations.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday (May 21, 2026) renewed criticism of NATO for not supporting the U.S. war on Iran, as he headed to alliance talks in Sweden.

“There are many countries in NATO that agree with us that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon, that Iran is a threat to the world,” Mr. Rubio told reporters in Miami before leaving for the talks among NATO Foreign Ministers in Helsingborg, Sweden.

President Donald Trump “said, fine, I’m going to do something about it,” Mr. Rubio said.

“He’s not asking them to commit troops. He’s not asking them to send their fighter jets in. But they refuse to do anything,” he said.

“We were very upset about that.”

The United States and Israel jointly attacked Iran on February 28. Mr. Trump did not consult NATO ahead of time, and key European allies have voiced scepticism over the need for war, with U.S. and Israeli claims of an imminent Iranian nuclear threat highly disputed and Tehran’s retaliation sending global oil prices soaring.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez denounced the war as illegal and refused to let U.S. jets use bases in his country.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Iran was “humiliating” the United States in negotiations, infuriating Mr. Trump whose administration quickly announced that the United States was pulling 5,000 troops from bases in Germany.

“I’ve been a strong supporter of NATO my entire career,” said Mr. Rubio, a former senator.

But he continued: “I know why NATO is good for Europe, but why is NATO good for America? Because it gives us bases in the region that allow us to project power during a contingency in the Middle East or somewhere else.”

“So when that is the key rationale for why you’re in NATO, and then you have countries like Spain denying us the use of these bases, well then, why are you in NATO? That’s a very fair question,” he said.

He added that other countries were more helpful, previously singling out Portugal for praise.

The United States and Cuba held talks this week on a U.S. offer of $100 million in assistance, which Washington has dangled as an incentive for reforms, a U.S. official said on Tuesday (May 19, 2026).

Mike Hammer, the acting U.S. ambassador to Havana, met on Monday (May 18, 2026) with Foreign Ministry officials, the State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

“We have been in close coordination with the Cubans. We had a meeting yesterday (Monday) and continue to pursue that proposal aggressively, contrary to some of the lies of the Cuban ministry of foreign affairs,” the official said.

“We continue to urge the regime to accept the proposal and try to prevent interference with the delivery of assistance,” he said.

The aid would be distributed through Catholic Relief Services and Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Protestant charity, and not handed over directly to the Cuban government, he said.

“The Cuban regime is sitting on several billions of dollars,” he said. “We would urge them to use that money to actually help the Cuban people invest in their infrastructure instead of hoarding it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a sworn foe of Havana’s communist government, has publicly offered the $100 million but has demanded that Cuba take steps to open up.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez last week said that Havana was open to reviewing the aid proposal, after earlier saying Rubio was lying about the offer.

Cuba has been in the throes of a major economic crisis with persistent energy blackouts after the United States overthrew Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro and ended the flow of free oil from Caracas in exchange for Cuban medical expertise and other services.

With the situation increasingly dire, Cuba — for decades targeted in U.S. espionage — last week took the extraordinary step of welcoming CIA Director John Ratcliffe for talks.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio Tuesday (March 10, 2026) that Iraq should not be used as a launch pad for attacks in the Middle East war.

Iraq neighbours Iran, against which the United States and Israel launched massive strikes on February 28, as well as the Gulf, which the Islamic republic has hit with missile and drone attacks.

Israel-Iran war updates on March 10, 2026

Within hours of the start of the war, fighter jets and missiles coming from every direction filled Iraq’s airspace.

Mr. Sudani stressed in a phone call with Mr. Rubio “the importance of ensuring that Iraqi airspace, territory, and waters are not used for any military action targeting neighbouring countries or the region,” the Prime Minister’s media office said.

Mr. Sudani rejected “any attempt to drag the country into ongoing conflicts,” as well as “violations of its airspace by any party.”

Iraq, long a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran, was drawn into the war from the outset, with strikes blamed on the U.S. and Israel targeting Iran-backed groups, which in turn have since claimed attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and the wider region.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said that Mr. Rubio “strongly condemned terrorist attacks by Iran and Iran-aligned terrorist militia groups in Iraq,” including the Kurdistan region.

He urged Iraq to take “all possible measures to safeguard U.S. diplomatic personnel and facilities.”

On Saturday (March 7, 2026), air defence systems intercepted rockets fired at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

U.S. air defences now intercept drones almost daily over Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, which also hosts a US consulate complex.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to travel to Israel next week to update Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, two Trump administration officials said.

Mr. Rubio is expected to meet with Netanyahu on February 28, according to the officials, who spoke Wednesday (February 18, 2026) on condition of anonymity to detail travel plans that have not yet been announced.

The U.S. and Iran recently have held two rounds of indirect talks over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Officials from both sides publicly offered some muted optimism about progress this week, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even saying that “a new window has opened” for reaching an agreement.

“In some ways, it went well,” U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance said about the talks in an interview Tuesday (February 17, 2026) with Fox News Channel. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.”

Mr. Netanyahu visited the White House last week to urge President Donald Trump to ensure that any deal about Iran’s nuclear programme also include steps to neutralise Iran’s ballistic missile program and end its funding for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

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Mr. Trump is weighing whether to take military action against Tehran as the administration surges military resources to the region, raising concerns that any attack could spiral into a larger conflict in the Middle East.

Last week, Mr. Trump told reporters that a change in power in Iran “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” He added, “For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking.”

The Trump administration has dispatched the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join a second carrier as well as other warships and military assets that the U.S. has built up in the region.

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Dozens of U.S. fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s and F-16s, have left bases in the U.S. and Europe in recent days to head to the Middle East, according to the Military Air Tracking Alliance, a team of about 30 open-source analysts that routinely analyses military and government flight activity.

The team says it’s also tracked more than 85 fuel tankers and over 170 cargo planes heading into the region.

Steffan Watkins, a researcher based in Canada and a member of the MATA, said he also has spotted support aircraft like six of the military’s early-warning E-3 aircraft head to a base in Saudi Arabia.

Those aircraft are key for coordinating operations with a large number of aircraft. He says they were pulled from bases in Japan, Germany and Hawaii.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday (December 19, 2025) that ​a new governance structure for Gaza — made up of an international ‌board and a group of Palestinian technocrats — would be in place ​soon, followed by the deployment of foreign troops, as the U.S. hopes to cement a fragile ceasefire in Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave.

Mr. Rubio, speaking at a year-end news conference, said the status quo was not sustainable in Gaza, where Israel has continued to strike Hamas targets while the militant group has reasserted its control since the October peace agreement brokered by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“That’s why ​we have a sense of urgency about bringing phase one to its ⁠full completion, which is the establishment of the Board of Peace, and the establishment of the Palestinian technocratic authority or organization that’s going to be on the ground, and then the stabilization force comes ​closely thereafter,” Mr. Rubio said.

Mr. Rubio said progress ⁠had been made recently on identifying Palestinians to join the technocratic group, and said Washington was aiming to get the governance bodies in place “very soon,” without offering a specific timeline.

Mr. Rubio was speaking after U.S. Central Command hosted a conference in ‌Doha this week with partner nations to plan the International Stabilization Force (ISF) ‌for Gaza. Two U.S. officials told Reuters last week that international troops could be deployed in the strip as early as next month, ‍after the U.N. Security Council voted in November to authorize the force.

It remains unclear how Palestinian militant group Hamas will be disarmed and countries considering contributing troops ‍to the ISF are wary that Hamas will engage their soldiers in combat.

Mr. Rubio did not specify who would be responsible for disarming Hamas, and conceded that countries contributing troops want to know what the ISF’s specific mandate is and how it will be funded. “I think we owe them a few more answers before we can ask anybody to firmly commit, but I feel very confident that we have a number of nation states acceptable to all sides in this who are willing to step forward ⁠and be a part of that stabilization force.,” Mr. Rubio said, noting that Pakistan was among the countries who had expressed interest.

Establishing security and ​governance was key to drawing donors to pay for reconstruction in Gaza, Mr. Rubio added.

“Who’s ⁠going to pledge billions of dollars to build things that are going to get blown up again because a war starts?” Mr. Rubio said, discussing the possibility of a donor conference to raise reconstruction funds. “They want to know who’s in charge, and they want to know that there’s security so and ⁠that there’ll be long term stability.”