US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will arrive in Athens on the evening of Tuesday, October 6, according to well-informed sources at parapolitika.gr. The following day, the 6th Greece-US Strategic Dialogue will take place, and on the morning of Thursday, October 8, the head of American diplomacy will depart the country. Rubio will be accompanied by US Deputy Secretary of State Alison Hooker — who visited Athens in early September to prepare for the visit — along with a high-ranking team of American diplomats and officials.
Read more: Why Rubio is coming to Athens in October: The full backstory behind the US Secretary of State’s agenda — Dendias in Egypt today
Rubio in Athens: The 6th Greece-US Strategic Dialogue and open fronts in defense and energy
Athens is preparing to welcome the American diplomatic delegation at a particularly critical and fluid moment in the broader Eastern Mediterranean region. At the heart of the two-day visit will be the 6th round of the Greece-US Strategic Dialogue, which covers a range of issues including defense and energy cooperation. The American official will hold a formal meeting with Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, and is also expected to be received by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Marco Rubio’s visit comes at a time when Athens is offering a stable anchor for American diplomacy. According to analysts, Greece’s role is emerging as pivotal for Euro-Atlantic relations, which are at their lowest point following the openly declared lack of trust expressed by US President Donald Trump. Furthermore, Greece hosts critical military installations — most notably the Souda Bay military base — as well as strategic energy corridors that provide access to areas of high sensitivity and importance for the United States, including the Balkans and Western Europe. At the same time, Greece has forged strong strategic ties with Israel, America’s most important partner in the region.
Eddie Zemenides to parapolitika.gr: “Rubio has a vision for the region and Greece is at the center of it”
According to Eddie Zemenides, Executive Director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council (HALC), “Rubio has demonstrated that he has a vision for our region, and Greece is at the center of that vision.” Zemenides recalls that the US Secretary of State — together with former Senator Robert Menendez — was a key sponsor of two landmark pieces of legislation. The first was the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act (East Med Act, 2019), which redefined American policy in the Eastern Mediterranean by emphasizing the strategic alliance among the US, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel. The second, enacted in 2021, was the US-Greece Defense and Inter-Parliamentary Partnership Act, drafted with the aim of deepening the United States’ strategic alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean — part of which is the “3+1” framework involving Greece, Cyprus, Israel, and the US.
As Zemenides tells parapolitika.gr, Marco Rubio’s visit to Athens “is a sign of trust — but not only that. When we have a Strategic Dialogue, the entire US government is engaged across many departments and all the open issues in the US-Greece partnership are put on the table. They look for ways to move forward. The fact that the Strategic Dialogue takes place regularly shows there is a genuine will to build the bilateral relationship even further on what has already been established. I expect — I believe — there will be some developments on energy, defense, and economics. This relationship isn’t something where you say, ‘we’ve reached a peak and don’t need to do anything more.’ We have laid the best foundation we’ve ever had, and now we’re building on top of it.”
GSI, “Achilles Shield,” and Greek-Turkish relations in focus — what Rubio is expected to discuss with Gerapetritis and Mitsotakis
On the Greek side, it is expected that Turkey’s revisionist policies will also be raised during the talks — even though Washington has maintained its traditional balance in Greek-Turkish affairs, as established during Trump’s first term. However, the key issues expected to dominate discussions include the Greece-Cyprus-Israel electricity interconnection (GSI) and the deployment of the “Achilles Shield” air defense system in Greece. A key question will be whether Washington remains committed to its policy of equidistance or whether it will move toward de-escalating tensions in the region.
Rubio: parapolitika.gr sources report Athens visit with no stop in Ankara
Reliable sources have confirmed to parapolitika.gr that, as of now, the US Secretary of State’s schedule does not include a visit to Ankara either before or after Athens — a significant departure from the pattern consistently followed in past visits by American Secretaries of State. Should this be confirmed, it is a development open to considerable interpretation.
The previous Greece-US Strategic Dialogue took place on February 9, 2024, in Washington, between Giorgos Gerapetritis and Antony Blinken, and remains the primary framework for bilateral cooperation. The official agenda of such talks consistently includes regional developments, defense and security, energy and the environment, trade and investment, counterterrorism, humanitarian challenges, and the strengthening of people-to-people ties between the two nations.
