(LifeSiteNews) — On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that the U.S. went to war with Iran due to Israel’s impending attack plans, an admission that implies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively maneuvered the U.S. into the war.
“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,” Rubio said during a press briefing.
“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 — we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces,” he said.
Rubio’s remarks are corroborated by a Monday New York Times report detailing how Tucker Carlson, during a recent meeting with President Donald Trump, urged him to avoid war with Iran — only for Trump to respond that he had no choice but to join the attack that Israel would launch.
The New York Tines article additionally indicated that Netanyahu was intent on ensuring ongoing talks between the United States and Iran did not obstruct or hinder the planning of a joint American-Israeli assault against the Islamic Republic.
Senior Trump administration officials also conveyed the identical message during classified briefings provided to members of Congress on Monday — a point that was subsequently confirmed by Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana along with several other lawmakers.
“Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration and the officials (in the Cabinet) had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S., to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region in beyond,” Johnson said.
The narrative that Israel was set to act independently against Iran is challenged by the fact that during the 12-Day War last summer, the Israelis were dependent upon American air defenses to shoot down Iranian missiles. Additionally, a February 25 piece in Politico reported how Trump officials expressed a preference for Israel to strike first, prompting an Iranian response upon American assets, and thus providing a clearer political case for U.S. intervention at home.
White House attempts to backtrack
After significant criticism of Rubio’s remarks, the administration seems to be shifting the narrative in response. On X, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted an article from National Review headlined “No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran.”
Additionally, addressing journalists on Tuesday, Rubio backtracked, stating his comments the previous day referenced only the timing of Israel’s plan to strike Iran, emphasizing that Trump had already decided to launch the war in order to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile program.
And most significantly, President Trump denied on Tuesday that Israel had forced his hand into attacking Iran, proposing quite to the contrary that he may have “forced Israel’s hand” to initiate aggressions.
Though Pentagon officials told congressional staff on Sunday that Iran had no plans to strike U.S. assets in the Middle East unless provoked by an initial attack, Trump said he believed Iran might attack first.
“Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready,” he said, appearing to contradict Rubio’s Monday statements.
Tucker Carlson: Benjamin Netanyahu made decision for US to go to war
Analyzing the U.S. and Israeli initiation of war against Iran over the weekend, Tucker Carlson stated in a Monday monologue that Netanyahu had informed the White House he would attack Iran with or without U.S. involvement.
And given the significant American personnel assets in the region along with vast energy infrastructure on which the world is dependent, the U.S. could act with them and try to be a “moderating force” or just say “no” and threaten to “cut off aid or something,” he said.
But saying no “was not even on the table. That’s never been on the table,” Carlson observed. “No one has ever in the last 63 years considered doing that, really. The last president to do that was John F. Kennedy in 1962 when he got in a — not as famous as it should be — dispute with … the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, over Israel’s nuclear program at Dimona.”
At that time, “President Kennedy said ‘no’” and demanded an end to Israel’s testing of nuclear weapons and inspections upon their facilities, he recalled.
“And of course (Kennedy) was not able to make good on those promises because he was killed in November of 1963 and the person who took his place, his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, gave a green light to the Israeli nuclear program,” the popular conservative pundit said. “So that was the last time an American president said no, a hard no, to Israel, and tried to restrain its core ambitions.”
“So the truth is, and this is hard to say,” Carlson emphasized, “but the United States didn’t make the decision (to go to war with Iran). Benjamin Netanyahu did.”
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