WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Trump attacked Iran over the weekend because he knew Israel was going to launch a military strike and worried about retaliation against American bases from Tehran.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. 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,” Rubio told reporters Monday afternoon on Capitol Hill.
Rubio said the US acted “proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage.”
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The secretary of state spoke before he, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, privately briefed about 20 senior lawmakers.
“We knew that if Iran was attacked [by Israel], 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,” Rubio said.
“Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen.”
Rubio also said the objective was not regime change, but ending Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.
“The objectives of this operation are to destroy their ballistic missile capability and make sure they can’t rebuild, and make sure that they can’t hide behind that to have a nuclear program,” he said.
But Rubio said there were no complaints about Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei being killed.
“We would love for there to be an Iran that’s not governed by radical Shia clerics,” he said.
“While we would love to see a new regime,” he added. “The bottom line is, no matter who governs that country a year from now, they’re not going to have these ballistic missiles.”
Rubio said a looming Israeli strike on Iran was the reason for Trump’s decision just hours after the president himself told The Post Monday morning that he made up his mind after US-Iran talks ended without a deal Thursday in Geneva.
Trump did not attribute his decision to Israel, saying Iran’s resistance to a deal made it impossible to trust the Islamic Republic and that US intelligence indicated that Iran had started work on a new nuclear facility to replace three sites ruined by his airstrikes last June.
The president later identified four objectives while speaking at the White House — the two Rubio mentioned, plus destroying Iran’s navy and stopping its support for armed groups in other Middle Eastern countries.
Trump openly called for regime change before the mission and has urged Iranian dissidents to take advantage of the power vacuum to toppled the theocracy, but administration officials told lawmakers that it wasn’t a specific US war aim.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) slammed the private briefing.
“I found their answers completely and totally insufficient. At least to me, that briefing raised many more questions than it answered,” Schumer fumed afterwards — as Congress prepares for upcoming votes on whether to attempt to rein in US involvement.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that “this is still a war of choice” and that it “has been acknowledged by others [that it] was dictated by Israel’s goals and timeline.”
Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Post afterwards that there was more nuance than Israel simply leading the US into war.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the United States’ airstrikes on Iran:
“I would not say that Israel is the decision factor for us,” Mast said — arguing instead that evidence presented to lawmakers showed that Iran was an “imminent threat” to US troops due to its own actions.
Mast acknowledged that Democrats were skeptical at the briefing about the claim there was an imminent threat from Iran.
Mast said it appears the US was within “weeks” of accomplishing core goals — aligning with Trump’s stated timeframe of four weeks or less, which is less than the 90 days allowed by the War Powers Resolution.
“President Trump quipped very well that, you know, he’s creating jobs in Iran,” Mast said.
“America’s taking applications for that leadership spot, but it’s going to be somebody who’s not directing attacks against the United States of America or seeking to develop those [missile and nuclear] platforms.”
