Rubio rejects idea Israel forced US into war with Iran....Purim Spiel...

 

Rubio walks back his suggestion that Israel forced the United States’ hand in Iran strikes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/world/middleeast/israel-iran-strikes-rubio.html?smid=url-share

Here We Go - It's The Jews --- "Lawmakers: Israeli plan to attack Iran dictated Trump’s decision on strikes" Listen To Rubio - at 1:40, 4:26 --- and the Entire Press Conference

 

Senior lawmakers in both parties said Monday that the Trump administration’s decision to launch bombing and missile strikes across Iran this weekend was largely dictated by Israel’s plan to attack Iran with or without U.S. support.

 

 RELEVANT TRANSCRIPT:

1:26

 The third is the

1:28

assessment that was made that if we

1:30

stood and waited for that attack to come

1:32

first before we hit them, we would

1:34

suffer much higher casualties. And so

1:37

the president made the very wise

1:38

decision. He we knew that there was

1:40

going to be an Israeli action. We knew

1:42

that that would precipitate an attack

1:43

against American forces and we knew that

1:45

if we didn't preemptively go after them

1:47

before they launched those attacks, we

1:49

would suffer higher casualties and

1:51

perhaps even hire those killed. And then

1:53

we would all be here answering questions

1:55

about why we knew that and didn't act.

And the imminent threat was that we knew

4:12

that if Iran was attacked and we

4:14

believed they would be attacked that

4:15

they would immediately come after us.

4:17

And we were not going to sit sit there

4:19

and absorb a blow before we responded

4:21

because the Department of War assessed

4:23

that if we did that, if we waited for

4:25

them to hit us first after they were

4:26

attacked and by someone else, Israel

4:28

attacked them, they hit us first and we

4:30

waited for them to hit us, we would

4:32

suffer more casualties and more deaths.

4:34

We went proactively in a defensive way

4:36

to prevent them from inflicting higher

4:38

damage. Had we not done so, there would

4:40

have been hearings on Capitol Hill about

4:41

how we knew that this was going to

4:43

happen and we didn't act preemptively to

4:45

prevent more casualties and more loss of

4:46

life.

4:51

US was forced to strike because of an

4:53

impending Israeli action.

4:54

No, first well I mean two things I would

4:56

say. Number one is no matter what

4:57

ultimately this operation needed to

4:59

happen. That's the question of why now.

5:01

But this operation needed to happen

5:02

because Iran in about a year or a year

5:04

and a half would cross the line of

5:06

immunity. Meaning they would have so

5:07

many short-range missiles, so many

5:09

drones that no one could do anything

5:10

about it because they could hold the

5:12

whole world hostage. Look at the damage

5:13

they're doing now. And this is a

5:15

weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now.

5:17

So that had to happen. Obviously, we

5:19

were aware of Israeli intentions and

5:21

understood what that would mean for us

5:22

and we had to be prepared to act as a

5:24

result of it. But this had to happen no

5:25

matter what. 

 

* 

Senior administration officials told Republican and Democratic lawmakers at a classified briefing on Capitol Hill that the Israeli plan to strike Iran pushed the United States to take preemptive action to protect U.S. troops stationed at bases throughout the Middle East, whom the Pentagon believed would have been targeted by retaliatory strikes.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee attended the briefing, said the decision to initiate a massive military assault on another country because of pressure from a U.S. ally put the nation in “uncharted” territory.

“This is still a war of choice that has been acknowledged by others that was dictated by Israel’s goals and timeline,” Warner told reporters at the briefing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided the briefing to lawmakers Monday afternoon.

Warner said he supports Israel, but he questioned the decision to put American lives at risk when an imminent threat may be directed at an ally instead of the United States itself.  

“Israel is a great ally of America. I stand firmly with Israel. But I believe at the end of the day when we are talking about putting American soldiers in harm’s way and we have American casualties and expectations of more, there needs to be the proof of an imminent threat to American interests. I still don’t think that standard has been met,” he said.

Warner argued if the military operation against Iran “was being driven by imminent security threats from Iran against America, I think we would have had better planning.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), speaking to reporters after the briefing, said that President Trump faced a tough call on ordering strikes against Iran when it became clear that Israel would launch military operations, even without U.S. support, which would have put U.S. troops in the region in danger.

“Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. Iran was building missiles at a rapid clip to the point where our allies in the region could not keep up,” Johnson said.

“Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration and the officials [in the Cabinet] had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S., to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region in beyond,” Johnson said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5764030-trump-administration-iran-strikes-israel/?