Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States attacked Iran over the “imminent” threat posed by an Iranian response to an Israeli attack that the U.S. knew was coming.
The Trump administration gave out a flurry of explanations for the largest U.S. combat operation since the 2003 Iraq War on Monday, following the Saturday morning attack. Speaking with reporters, Rubio claimed the danger posed by an Iranian response was too great to sit out of any attack, which was bound to come from Israel anyway.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio said. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
“There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” he told reporters, later adding that “we went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen, and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) gave a similar answer, adding that the U.S. had “exquisite intelligence” that made it confident of the belief that Iran would retaliate against U.S. “personnel and assets” in the region.
“We have troops in harm’s way, and we have many Americans in the region, and that was of a great concern. If we had waited for all of those eventualities to take place, the consequences of inaction on our part would have been, could have been devastating. We don’t know at what magnitude, but you can assume … we would have suffered staggering losses,” he said.
The Trump administration has given various justifications for its attack against Iran, including the development of its nuclear program, its role in regional destabilization, its past attacks against U.S. personnel, and its growing ballistic missile program. Rubio’s explanation, saying that Washington feared an Iranian reaction to an apparently inevitable Israeli attack, is likely to feed into critics of Jerusalem from the Left and Right who claim the operation came at the bidding of Israel.
The strike was the second time the U.S. had attacked Iran in the middle of nuclear negotiations, though on a much larger scale this time around.
Washington and Jerusalem have managed an unparalleled level of military and intelligence integration and cooperation ahead of the strike on Iran, apparently divvying up responsibilities.
Two senior Israeli defense officials familiar with the planning of the operation told the New York Times hours after hostilities began that the attack began at 8:10 a.m. local time and included direct strikes against high-ranking figures. The plan presented to Trump had Israel focusing its strikes on missile storage sites, production facilities, and launchers, while the U.S. would focus on nuclear, IRGC, and government targets.
In Trump’s first address, less than two hours after the first strikes on Saturday, he laid out an extensive list of grievances against Iran, going back to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.
“It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer,” he said of the Islamic regime’s activities across the Middle East.
Trump swore to “raze Iran’s missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate” its navy.
He concluded by making clear he was aiming for regime change, calling on the Iranian people to “seize control of your destiny” and take over the government.
US AND ISRAEL LAUNCH ‘PREEMPTIVE’ ATTACK AGAINST IRAN
The president gave himself a pat on the back in a Monday Truth Social post, praising his previous hostility to the Iran nuclear deal and claiming Tehran would have had a nuclear weapon by now if he hadn’t scrapped it.
“If I didn’t terminate Obama’s horrendous Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), Iran would have had a Nuclear Weapon three years ago. That was the most dangerous transaction we have ever entered into, and had it been allowed to stand, the World would be an entirely different place right now. You can blame Barack Hussein Obama, and Sleepy Joe Biden. THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!” Trump said.
