The US launched preemptive strikes against Iran after learning Israel was about to attack — and American troops in the region faced an imminent threat of retaliation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday. Rubio made the revelation on Capitol Hill, where he briefed a small group of congressional leaders on the joint US-Israel offensive. ‘There absolutely was an imminent threat,’ Rubio stated. ‘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, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.’ Rubio said the Department of War determined that a defensive posture following an Israeli attack would only open the US to more casualties. Five American soldiers have died so far in combat.
Proactively defensive
‘We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage,’ he said. ‘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 more loss of life,’ Rubio explained. The revelation outraged both Democrats and Republicans. ‘Secretary Rubio’s remarks indicate that Israel put U.S. forces in harm’s way by insisting on attacking Iran,’ Congressman Joaquin Castro reacted on X. ‘And the administration was complicit—joining their war instead of talking them down.’
Worst possible thing
Conservative pundit Matt Walsh wrote: ‘So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said.’ Iran had already prepositioned its missiles and had them on ready alert, the secretary of state claimed. He did not specify where the missiles were aiming or which US targets would have been within range. ‘Within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north, for that matter, had already been activated to launch. In fact, those had already been pre-positioned.’
The small cadre of lawmakers being briefed Monday is referred to as the ‘gang of eight,’ and it is comprised of the leaders of both parties in the House and Senate and their respective intelligence committee chairmen. Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford and ranking member Jim Himes; and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton and ranking member Mark Warner, were the eight members included in the briefing. The ‘gang of eight’ was also briefed last week before the strikes. Still, Democrats across both chambers have decried the Trump administration for not informing more lawmakers of the impending military action against Iran.
‘There’s no law that requires us to do that,’ Rubio told reporters of the complaints. ‘The law says we have to notify them 48 hours after beginning hostilities. We’ve done that. I think the notification went today, but we did notify members of Congress in advance.’ He went on to note how ‘we can’t notify 535 members of Congress,’ likely due to the operational security threat of so many people knowing of a covert military action. War powers resolutions – legislation aimed at reeling in the President’s authority to unilaterally order strikes – have already been drafted in both the House and Senate.
However, the GOP-controlled Congress has not passed these resolutions, despite large Democratic support and the backing of some Republicans. Rubio said that though Congress has the right to take a war powers vote, its already happened ‘a bunch of times’ without success. Even if it did pass, it would likely face legal trouble as no presidential administration – neither Republican or Democratic – has ever said that a war powers resolution is constitutional, Rubio said. ‘We’ve complied with the law 100 percent, and we’re going to continue to comply with it.’
