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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday called Iceland a “critical outpost” for security and said Washington was open to deepening defense cooperation with Reykjavik as he began a three-country trip aimed at strengthening U.S. influence in the Arctic.
“Iceland, and its location, plays a critical role in the defense, both of Europe, but also the homeland of the United States because of geography,” Rubio said during his visit to Reykjavik.
He said Iceland had long served as “a critical outpost for monitoring clandestine behavior and deterring our adversaries from entering your sovereign territory and the sovereign territory of our mutual allies.”
“We would be open to having those conversations to see what more we can do together,” Rubio added.
Rubio met Icelandic Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir at Hofdi House, the site of the 1986 summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
October marks the 40th anniversary of the meeting, known as the Reykjavik Summit, which marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
Rubio later met Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir.
“There’s interest in doing more together, and obviously if there’s opportunities that make sense for both countries, it’s something we would pursue,” Rubio said.
Iceland is a founding member of NATO but has no army of its own, and no troops are permanently stationed in the country.
The United States maintained a continuous military presence at Keflavik until 2006.
“We obviously had an enduring presence here that ended in 2006, not because of anything that was going wrong, but because we shifted forces to other parts of the world,” Rubio said. “The reality of it is, the world has changed over the last 20 years.”
Rubio said before leaving Washington on Monday that the visit grew out of a conversation with his Icelandic counterpart during a NATO summit earlier this year.
He described Iceland as a “good friend” of the United States.
The visit is the first by a U.S. secretary of state since Antony Blinken traveled to Iceland in 2021 as part of a broader group.
The State Department said Rubio would discuss economic and security cooperation during the trip.
From Iceland, Rubio is scheduled to travel to Greece and then Portugal.
Iceland, an island nation of about 400,000 people, has drawn increased attention since U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year threatened to seize Greenland before negotiating an agreement last month to expand the U.S. military presence there.
“Our alignment with Iceland is generally, you know, very concrete,” Rubio said. “I think we share the same perspectives of the world.”
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