Rubio attempts to clarify claim that US decided on Iran strike because it believed Israeli attack was coming

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio tries to clarify remarks he made yesterday when he said the US launched its operation against Iran on Saturday because it believed an Israeli preemptive strike would lead the Islamic Republic to target American assets in the region.

Rubio says US President Donald Trump had decided anyway to strike Iran, and that he was only speaking yesterday to why the decision was made to launch on that particular day.

“I told you this had to happen anyway, the president made a decision,” Rubio says in remarks to reporters before briefing Congress on the operation, carried out in partnership with Israel. “And the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks.”

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day in the Oval Office, Trump also denied that Israel dragged the US into the war with Iran.

Rubio confirms that an Iranian drone struck a parking lot adjacent to the US consulate in Dubai earlier Tuesday and that all American personnel are accounted for.

He adds, using slang referencing the late Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, that the US and Israel are going to “unleash chiang” on the Iranian regime in the coming “hours and days.”

“You’re going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and in the intensity of these attacks as the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime,” Rubio says.