Rubio says Israel's strike plan triggered US attack on Iran
The US knew that not hitting Iran before Israel's strike would lead to higher American casualties, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio walks after speaking to the media on the day of a briefing for Congressional leaders on the situation in Iran, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, on Ma 2, 2026. (Photo: Reuters/Ken Cedeno)
WASHINGTON: The United States attacked Iran only after learning that ally Israel was going to strike and fearing Tehran would retaliate against US forces, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday (Mar 2).
"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.
Rubio, who was preparing to brief key US lawmakers, said that Iran had told field commanders to respond automatically against US forces if there was an attack.
"If we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision" to hit alongside Israel, Rubio said.
Asked if the US faced an imminent threat from Iran - a key threshold in the US as Congress constitutionally has the power to declare war - Rubio again pointed to the Israeli plans.
"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," Rubio said.
"We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow," Rubio said, adding that if Iran hit US forces first, "we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act".
Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, said that Rubio's comments indicated that Israel "put US forces in harm's way by insisting on (an) attack on Iran".
"This is unacceptable of the president, and unacceptable of a country that calls itself our ally," Castro wrote on X.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier said that it was Israel that carried out the strike on Saturday in Tehran that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other key officials, after intelligence emerged that they were meeting.
Rubio, however, said that President Donald Trump's administration believed in the need to strike Iran, regardless of how the timing was triggered.
"No matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen," Rubio said.
Rubio said that the US would like to see the overthrow of Iran's clerical state but that that was not the goal.
"We hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government and establish a new future for that country. We would love for that to be possible," Rubio said.
"But the objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities and of their naval capabilities."
The State Department on Monday urged Americans to leave much of the Middle East, including Egypt and Gulf states, due to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The department "urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks", Mora Namdar, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, wrote on X, listing 14 countries.
