Rubio claims US knew Israel would attack Iran, acted to protect American troops from ‘imminent threat’

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.”

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.

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