Rubio tells Iceland at Hofdi House that Washington will not act without consent

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Iceland on Tuesday that the United States would not do anything on the island without Icelandic consent. He said it at Hofdi House in Reykjavik, the white wooden building where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in October 1986.

The meeting was with Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir. Rubio is on a NATO swing that is also due to take him to Greece and Portugal. Before he left Washington on Monday he described the stop as a chance to press three items: a secure Arctic, stronger commercial and energy ties, and closer defence cooperation.

The consent line was the useful part of the day. Iceland is a NATO member with no standing army. The United States kept a permanent military presence at Keflavik, outside Reykjavik, for decades and closed that base in 2006 when priorities shifted. Rubio noted that history and said Washington would be open to talks on what the two governments could do together. He did not announce a reopened base, a troop number, or a signed agreement.

The visit sat on top of a September row. President Donald Trump posted an image that draped the American flag over Iceland, Greenland, Canada and Mexico. Gunnarsdottir summoned Ambassador Billy Long, who had been in the post about a month, and called the image unacceptable. Prime Minister Kristrun Frostadottir called it an insult to Icelanders, Canadians and Greenlanders. On Tuesday Gunnarsdottir said Iceland remained focused on the future. Rubio said he was not in Reykjavik to talk about social media posts. He called the atmosphere very positive.

Hofdi is not a random venue. The 1986 summit there is widely treated as the start of the end of the Cold War, even though the two leaders left without a treaty. Choosing it for a reassurance visit is a signal about the Arctic, not a claim that Washington and Moscow are about to cut a deal. Rubio framed the shared problem as rising tension with Russia in the high north and elsewhere. He did not set out a new Arctic force structure.

Iceland's position is awkward in a way that the consent sentence does not erase. The island sits on the sea lanes between the North Atlantic and the Arctic. It has no army of its own, so defence cooperation means foreign aircraft, ships and sensors on Icelandic ground or in Icelandic waters. A promise not to act without consent is the minimum a host government can ask. It does not say what Reykjavik will agree to if Washington comes back with a request for Keflavik, radar, or a larger rotational presence.

The map post is still the reason the sentence was needed. A foreign minister does not summon an ambassador over a joke she intends to forget. Rubio's decision to refuse the subject in public leaves the September image unanswered in the room where he was standing. Gunnarsdottir's line about the future is a way of parking that argument, not a withdrawal of the summons.

What was not on the table, at least in the public remarks, was a number. No new spending figure, no timetable for a base, no draft access agreement. The commercial and energy file was named and not itemised. Iceland's electricity is mostly hydro and geothermal. Any energy talk with Washington would have to be about cables, data centres, or minerals, and none of those projects was announced on Tuesday.

The next stops matter more than the photograph. Greece and Portugal are also on Rubio's list, and both have their own arguments with Washington about bases and overflight. Lisbon has already opened a prosecutorial look at US flights through Lajes during the Iran war. If the Iceland stop was meant to show that a map post can be walked back with a sentence about consent, the test is whether the same sentence is offered, and kept, in the next capital.

For Reykjavik the open question is narrower. If Washington asks to put people or aircraft back at Keflavik, the consent rule Rubio stated on Tuesday is the rule Iceland will cite. He has not yet said what he wants to put there.