😱Rubio Declares ‘🩷Old World Is Gone’ Following Iran Strikes…See more

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that the international order is undergoing rapid transformation following joint U.S. and Israeli military strikes against Iran, urging American allies to recognize what he described as a new geopolitical era and work with Washington to shape the West’s future. Speaking to reporters, Rubio said the global landscape has shifted significantly from the environment he grew up in. “The world is changing very fast right in front of us,” Rubio said. “The old world is gone, frankly—the world I grew up in—and we now live in a new era of geopolitics. It’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.”

Rubio added that the United States has already begun discussing these changes privately with allied governments and intends to continue those conversations as the situation evolves. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Rubio notified senior congressional leaders before the joint U.S.-Israeli operation targeting Iran. Her statement, posted on X, came amid criticism from some lawmakers who questioned whether Donald Trump authorized the strikes without proper congressional approval. Leavitt said Trump monitored the developing situation overnight from his residence at Mar-a-Lago alongside members of his national security team and spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to Leavitt, Rubio contacted members of the so-called “Gang of Eight,” the group of senior congressional leaders responsible for receiving sensitive intelligence briefings. She said seven of the eight members were successfully reached before the operation. The group includes the Senate and House majority and minority leaders, as well as the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. Mike Johnson confirmed that the leaders had previously been briefed on the possibility of military action. Under the National Security Act of 1947, Congress must be kept “fully informed” about major intelligence activities. However, scholars at Harvard Kennedy School note that administrations from both parties have long interpreted the requirement as allowing notification of only the Gang of Eight rather than full congressional committees. Criticism nevertheless emerged from lawmakers including Thomas Massie, who argued that the strikes amounted to acts of war without congressional authorization. Massie and Ro Khanna had planned to introduce legislation seeking to restrict unilateral presidential military action against Iran. Separately, Rubio announced that Iran had been designated a state sponsor of wrongful detention, accusing the Iranian government of detaining foreign nationals as political leverage and calling for the immediate release of Americans held in the country.