Rubio: ‘Imminent threat’ to US was Iran’s plan to strike American assets in response to Israeli attack

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reveals that the “imminent threat” posed by Iran that American officials have cited to justify striking Iran over the weekend was intelligence that Tehran would strike American assets in response to an Israeli attack.

“The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, they would immediately come after us,” Rubio tells reporters on Capitol Hill.

However, it is widely understood that any Israeli attack on Iran would only have taken place with Washington’s blessing.

“We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” Rubio says before briefing Congress.

“If we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else, we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.”

“We went proactively to prevent them from inflicting more 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 loss of life,” Rubio adds.

Rubio clarifies that the US operation “needed to happen” no matter what, but acted exactly when it did after becoming aware of an imminent Israeli strike that Washington believed would provoke an Iranian response against its assets in the region.

“We were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and understood what that would mean for us and had to be prepared to act as a result of it,” Rubio says.

Regardless, Rubio says it was key the operation take place around now, “Because Iran in about a year, or year and a half would’ve crossed the line of immunity — meaning they would so many short range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.”