By R. Cort Kirkwood (The New American)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted today that President Donald Trump’s “wise decision” to attack Iran on Saturday wasn’t his. Instead, it was Israel’s.
U.S. officials knew Israel would strike Iran, Rubio said. Thus, he confessed, Trump had no choice because Iran would retaliate against not only Israel, but also U.S. bases and personnel in the region. That would mean casualties and questions about U.S. preparedness.
The startling admission came as the U.S. Central Command reported that six Americans had been killed as of 4 p.m. today.
Israel Forced America’s Hand
Rubio’s frank confession of the role Israel played in convincing Trump to attack may well have been inadvertent, although Rubio is generally good on his feet with the media and perhaps the administration’s most articulate official.
“The United States conducted this operation with a fair, clear goal in mind,” Rubio said, “to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy, particularly to naval assets.”
“The second question I’ve been asked is, ‘Why now?’” he continued:
Well, there’s two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone — the United States or Israel or anyone — they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders. … Within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north … had already been activated to launch.
But then Rubio spilled the beans. Trump had to attack because Israel had decided to attack.
“The third is the assessment that was made that 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,” the secretary of state said:
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, and perhaps even higher [numbers] killed. And we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.
Read the rest here: Rubio Admits Israel Pulled U.S. Into War With Iran; U.S. Had to Act to Avoid Casualties – The New American
