Rubio: 'We can see the finish line' — confirms peace talks underway; US to reexamine NATO ties

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Tuesday evening (March 31) that the United States can 'see the finish line' in the Iran war. 'It's not today, it's not tomorrow, but it's coming; we're going to get to the point where our military will have achieved all the objectives of this mission,' Rubio said. Rubio's comments represent the clearest wind-down signal from the State Department since the war began on February 28. They come in lockstep with Trump's March 31 statement that the war will end 'in two or three weeks' and Trump's D33 announcement of a national address on April 1 at 9 PM EST. Crucially, Rubio confirmed that peace talks are underway — directly contradicting Iran FM Araghchi's assertion that while messages are being exchanged with the US, they do not constitute negotiations. Rubio also signaled a post-war foreign policy shift: the United States will have to reexamine its relationship with NATO following the conflict, a reference to the lack of NATO support for the US-Israel campaign and Trump's criticism of UK, France, and Germany. Separately, CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins provided the first comprehensive US casualty update: 13 service members killed (6 in the Iranian drone attack on Camp Arifjan/Port Shuaiba Kuwait, 1 at Prince Sultan Air Base Saudi Arabia, 6 in the KC-135 tanker crash in Iraq), 348 wounded in total, 315 returned to duty, 6 seriously wounded.