Not Richard Grennell, eh? I bet the intelligence community feels pretty nervous now. Donald Trump hasn't made his choice of Director of National Intelligence public yet, and now Grennell's available. 

Grennell would have had an inside track on Secretary of State after his tenure as US Ambassador to Germany in the first Trump term. Instead, the New York Times reports that Trump will appoint Marco Rubio to run the State Department, where he will work with Elise Stefanik as Trump's ambassador to the UN. That signals more muscular approach to foreign policy than perhaps expected, but still focused on American priorities than paying homage to the progressive global order:

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to name Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as his secretary of state, three people familiar with his thinking said on Monday, as Mr. Trump moves rapidly to fill out his foreign policy and national security team. ....

Mr. Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010, and has staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China and Iran in particular.

He initially found himself at odds with those Republicans who were more skeptical about interventions abroad, but he has also echoed Mr. Trump more recently on issues like Russia’s war against Ukraine, saying that the conflict has reached a stalemate and “needs to be brought to a conclusion.”

This video began circulating again on social media last night, and it might have been Rubio's audition. This took place almost exactly a year ago, when Code Pink tried to shame Rubio into wussing out on Hamas. Dumb mistake:

Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio speaks to CodePink. pic.twitter.com/QRBKc6ctWm

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 12, 2024

Send Code Pink a thank-you card when you get a chance. 

Earlier in the day, Trump announced Stefanik's appointment. The NYT sniffed a bit more at that choice, noting that the House Republican has no formal diplomatic experience. However, the report did land on the qualities that likely attracted Trump most about both Stefanik and Rubio:

Her foreign policy views track with Mr. Trump’s. A staunch supporter of Israel, she has repeatedly accused the U.N. of being plagued by “antisemitic rot” and proposed blocking funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

At home, her viral face-offs with Ivy League presidents over rising antisemitism on their campuses helped lead to several of them losing their jobs.

Indeed. Pairing these two younger Republicans sends a clear signal of hard-line defense of American interests, especially in regard to the Middle East. This makes it clear that the US policy in that region and at the UN will sharply diverge from the Obama-Biden orientation toward appeasement of Iran. There won't be any more public demonization of Israel for fighting a war started by Iran's proxies, and no question now of robust American support of Israel and the IDF.

However, Rubio has also been more of mainstream Republican when it comes to NATO. Trump will no doubt want to flex his muscles in Europe, and putting Grennell at State might have signaled that to be a central focus of the new administration. Appointing Rubio won't let NATO and EU off the hook for their commitments, but it likely won't be as much of a focus as in the first term. Rubio is far more focused on anti-communist prioriies -- Cuba will be a big project, one imagines -- and China will be the biggest issue, even more so than the Middle East, although Trump clearly wants Iran back in its sanctions box ASAP. Even that will come in the context of Trump's China strategy, however, as will Russia.

With that in mind, Trump's team is letting Israel know that while they will give them better support, Trump has his eyes set on a broad regional settlement as his top priority. Advisers reportedly briefed Netanyahu's cabinet on his plans for finalizing the Abraham Accords as well as keeping pressure on both Iran and China, and warned the cabinet not to pursue provocative annexation policies in the meantime. It's not clear that they got the message:

At least two officials in Donald Trump’s previous administration have warned senior Israeli ministers not to assume that the president-elect will support Israel annexing the West Bank in his second term, three sources familiar with the conversations told The Times of Israel.

Though the message was delivered in separate meetings and conversations held in the months leading up to Trump’s presidential election victory last week, far-right cabinet members did not seem deterred. On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank],” thanks to Trump’s return to office, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir last week said that “this is the time for sovereignty.” ...

In their recent meetings with several senior Israeli ministers, Trump’s former advisers did not rule out the possibility of the president-elect backing the move, but asserted that it should not be treated as a “foregone conclusion,” one Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The controversial move would face severe pushback from US allies in the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which Trump could lean on in order to address more pressing foreign policy aims, such as combating Iranian aggression, competing against China, and ending the war in Ukraine, according to a second Israeli official who was privy to one of the conversations an ex-Trump aide held with a cabinet minister.

Israel will no doubt see this as a major upgrade to its security in the short run. They will have more traction and more sympathy in a Trump administration with Rubio running State. But they will likely also know that Trump and Rubio will have higher overall prirorities, or at least they certainly have been warned about that. 

The Israelis won't be worrying too much about that. Not as much as the mnat-sec community is worrying about the return of Grennell, anyway.