U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is making a blunt claim about who is to blame for the chaos in the Middle East, and he is not pointing at the Palestinian issue. In an interview with Breitbart News published on Sunday, October 18, 2026, after his address at the Acropolis in Athens, Rubio said President Donald Trump has exposed that the Islamic regime in Tehran is the number one driver of instability, war and conflict, and the number one obstacle to peace in the region. He framed it as a break from the traditional thinking of the American political class, which he said treated the Palestinian question as the core issue. Rubio stressed he is not calling that issue irrelevant, but he argued it would be easier to deal with if Iran’s radical clerics did not exist. He went even further, saying that if those clerics did not exist, none of the region’s problems would exist.

To back it up, Rubio walked through the flashpoints one by one, calling Hezbollah in Lebanon “100 percent an agent of Iran,” naming Tehran as the top sponsor of the Houthis, and pointing to Iran-backed Shia militias. He also stressed that Iran is the only country in the region that has carried out direct attacks, not just proxy strikes, on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. The remarks fit the Trump administration’s hard line on Tehran amid a tense, war-shadowed 2026 that has centred on Iran’s nuclear program and access to the Strait of Hormuz, where Rubio also gave an update. Tension is clearly high, with U.S. missions in 12 Middle Eastern countries issuing security alerts the same day and an Iranian Revolutionary Guard spokesman warning that any attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure would have severe consequences for Israel. Rubio’s view is a political argument, not a settled fact, and it is sure to spark fierce debate over whether pressure on Tehran can really deliver peace or whether other conflicts in the region need to be solved on their own terms.