President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he had ordered US forces to join Israel’s attack on Iran because he believed Tehran was about to strike first.
However, the statement differs from the explanation previously offered by his secretary of state about how the war began. Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the US launched the attack out of concern that Iran might retaliate against Israel’s planned action against Tehran.
‘We knew there would be Israeli action, we knew it would provoke an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t take preemptive action against them before they launched these attacks, we would suffer greater losses,’ Rubio said.
Trump rejected suggestions that Israel had pushed the United States into the conflict. His administration had already offered several versions and faced criticism from some supporters and Democrats who accused the president of starting a ‘war of his own volition’ [Trump did not seek congressional approval for the intervention, editor’s note].
‘Maybe I forced them (Israel) to do something,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. ‘We negotiated with these lunatics, and I thought they would attack first. If we didn’t do it, they would attack first. I was firmly convinced of that.’
Conservative commentators voice doubts
Several prominent conservative commentators have intensified their criticism of the attacks on Iran, arguing that Rubio’s remarks suggest that Israel – rather than the Trump administration – is ‘dictating’ the situation.
‘So they are openly telling us that we are at war with Iran because Israel forced us into it,’ conservative political commentator Matt Walsh wrote to his four million followers on X in response to Rubio’s remarks. ‘This is basically the worst thing he could have said.’
His conservative colleague Megyn Kelly told her audience that she had doubts about Trump’s decision to attack Iran.
‘It’s not our government’s job to take care of Iran or Israel. They’re supposed to take care of us. And to me, this looks like an obvious Israeli war,’ Kelly said.
The criticism from Trump’s right wing comes at a time when the Republican Party is trying to maintain control of the US Congress in the November midterm elections.
Damage control
The debate over the origins of the war has forced the White House into damage control.
On Tuesday, Trump answered questions from reporters in public for the first time since the start of the US–Israeli air war on Saturday. He had previously addressed the attacks in two videos, in individual interviews with selected journalists and in brief remarks at the White House on Monday.
After talks between the United States and Iran last Thursday in Geneva, the US president said he believed Iran was on the verge of launching attacks, but he did not provide any evidence for the claim. Iran, by contrast, described the talks as positive and said further negotiations were planned in the coming days.
‘It’s something that had to be done,’ Trump said, without explaining in detail the need for war against Iran before it began.
Rubio, asked about his earlier remarks during a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, told reporters: ‘The bottom line is this: the president has decided that they will not strike us first. It’s that simple, folks.’
Two senior officials in the Trump administration held a conference call with reporters on Tuesday to describe the events leading up to the military operations. They focused in particular on the Geneva talks with Iranian officials, which were led by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and mediated by Oman.
The officials said Witkoff and Kushner repeatedly urged Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. Instead, Iran presented a plan that would allow it to enrich uranium to a higher percentage at a research reactor in northern Iran.
According to the officials, the American envoys concluded that the Iranians were using delaying tactics.
‘They were unwilling to give up the building blocks of what they needed to keep in order to get to a (nuclear) bomb,’ one of the officials said. Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon.
The envoys reported back to Trump and told him that a nuclear agreement similar to the one negotiated by former president Barack Obama’s administration and world powers with Iran in 2015 could be reached. However, they warned that it would take months. Trump ordered US forces to take action the following day, and the attacks began on Saturday.
(reuters, im)