Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's jobs may be at stake if they continue to oppose President Donald Trump's Iran deal, a senior White House official warned.
The threat emerged in a report published Sunday by the right-leaning Israeli daily Israel Hayom, which detailed a bitter internal White House battle over the emerging memorandum of understanding with Tehran.
"The debate has been settled. Those who oppose it may pay a personal price," a senior US official told the outlet.
According to the report, Vice President JD Vance, envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump envoy Jared Kushner have driven the push for a deal, arguing the Iranian regime is unlikely to collapse soon and that Gulf states — particularly Qatar — have pressed hard for an agreement.
Rubio and Hegseth argued the opposite: that Iran is buckling under economic pressure and Washington should tighten the screws, not ease them. The two men had been the public faces of that harder line — touting "Project Freedom," a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, only for Trump to shelve it hours after they publicly praised it.
Trump has since sided firmly with the deal camp. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly warned that lifting sanctions would be nearly impossible to reverse, but the Israel Hayom report said his objections changed the terms only slightly.
"This is an American game being managed with utter foolishness…Trump is acting badly and against the American interest, not only the Israeli one," Oded Ailam, a former senior Mossad official, told Israel Hayom.
Sanctions on Iranian oil sales are expected to be lifted — at least in part — after the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens, according to the report.