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February 28, 2026

WASHINGTON — Senior State Department official Greg Colburn, who has spent the past month leading negotiations with Iran, was reportedly sitting motionless at his desk Saturday morning after concluding that the talks had largely served to buy time for the preparation of imminent U.S. military strikes.

“Were the talks ever real?” Colburn was overheard mumbling to himself, according to aides who described his tone as “professionally subdued but existentially concerned.”

Colburn was later said to have taken comfort in the discovery that the negotiating strategy required significantly less effort than senior leadership had initially suggested. Officials familiar with the process confirmed that much of the work involved using ChatGPT to rewrite the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action adding the prompt, “Make this sound less Obama and more Trump.”

Close aides reported that Colburn spent much of the morning ignoring a series of encrypted messages from Brian Farrell, the lead negotiator on Russia–Ukraine peace talks, which colleagues described as “increasingly urgent but largely unread.”

In a brief conversation with a longtime friend, Colburn acknowledged that the delays from the White House made more sense in hindsight, “There were several times when the Iranian diplomats made remarkably reasonable requests, only for the White House to respond with a request to ‘sleep on it.’ Colburn reportedly attempted to frame his role in operational terms. “Best case, I bought time,” he said. “At least that may have helped save American service member lives by creating strategic space for preparations.”

He then paused before adding, “Although that does also mean facilitated an unprovoked war.”

Sources say Colburn immediately returned to his computer to review his personal liability insurance policy, focusing on whether it covered potential exposure to international war crimes statutes.

Witnesses said Colburn’s reflections were interrupted when Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped down the hallway. “I’m about to be the Viceroy of Venezuela and Iran, bitches,” Rubio reportedly announced, before fist-bumping several ambassadors.

The Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Foreign Policy Lead then stopped near a dartboard featuring a photo of the Ayatollah and threw a dart that landed squarely on the nose. “I can’t miss,” he yelled, his voice echoing down the hallway.

Colburn’s existential crisis was disrupted moments later by a new email with the subject line: “URGENT — Need Negotiating Strategy For Cuba ASAP.”