A day after suggesting U.S. strikes on Iran may have been influenced by Israeli plans, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday defended the decision to strike and pushed back on criticism over the rationale for the action.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Rubio said President Donald Trump acted to prevent potential attacks on U.S. forces and that he “determined we were not going to get hit first.”
“We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way. If you tell the President of the United States that if we don’t go first we’re going to have more people killed and more people injured, the president is going to go first,” Rubio said. “That’s what he did. That’s what the president will always do. He will always put the safety and security of our men and women in uniform and of all Americans before anything else. He’s always going to do that and that’s what he did here.”
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“In addition to that, I would argue that this threat from Iran, they are hiding behind these missiles and hiding behind these drones,” Rubio added. “They wanted to reach a point where you couldn’t touch them and then they could do whatever the hell they wanted with their nuclear program, and there was no way in the world that this terrorist regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch.”
Rubio also said the State Department is working to arrange charter planes and buses to assist Americans stranded in the Middle East because of the conflict. Earlier in the day, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said the U.S. embassy in Israel is not in a position to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing the country.
"It will be a variety of methods, charter flights, military flights and transports, expanded commercial opportunities and in some cases land routes that will allow them to go to neighboring countries who might have open airports at that point," Rubio said. "So it's a lot of different things here that need to happen in order to move people, but it all starts by knowing that you're there. It all starts by knowing that where you are and how we can get a hold of you."
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Meanwhile, Rubio's comments Tuesday came as he was on Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on the situation in Iran. Both chambers of Congress are set to vote this week on measures that could limit U.S. military involvement in Iran.
The decision to launch the strikes has also drawn bipartisan skepticism, with some Republicans citing Trump’s campaign pledge to avoid new U.S. wars. Public opinion is also mixed, with polling indicating only about four in 10 Americans — most of them Republicans — view the strikes as necessary.
