Rubio’s spin on the Iran MOU sounds different from Trump and Vance | CNN Politics

For more than a week, America’s top diplomat was conspicuously quiet about something that would have seemed very much in his wheelhouse: a nascent agreement with Iran. This led plenty to surmise that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, like many of his fellow conservative foreign policy hawks, might have had misgivings about it. Well, now Rubio is actually speaking. But his sales pitch sounds quite a bit different from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. During visits with Middle Eastern allies to rally support and soothe fears, Rubio has not only avoided forceful affirmations of the controversial memorandum of understanding; he’s also sounded a significantly different tone about the particulars of the MOU and the peace process. A case in point came Thursday, when Rubio doubled down on his past statements labeling Iran’s leaders as “religious … lunatics.” “The Iranian system is led by clerics – radical clerics,” Rubio said during a visit to Bahrain. “That’s what it’s always been led by. And that’s what it continues to be led by.” But the comments came a week after Trump and Vance raised plenty of eyebrows by pitching the Iranians as potential