Rubio Says the US Launched a War With Iran Because Israel Was Planning To Attack

by Dave DeCamp | March 2, 2026 at 5:23 pm ET | Iran, Israel

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday said that the US launched a war against Iran because Israel was planning to attack, an admission that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu steered the US into the conflict.

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States, Israel, or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States,” Rubio told reporters.

“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first, before we hit them, we would have suffered 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.
Secretary Marco Rubio visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, September 14, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

Rubio’s comments align with reporting from The New York Times that said when Tucker Carlson recently met with President Trump and tried to convince him not to launch a war with Iran, the president said he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch.

The Times report said that Netanyahu was determined to ensure that the negotiations between the US and Iran wouldn’t get in the way of planning for a joint US-Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic.

But Trump and his top officials tried to sell the war as being related to Iran’s nuclear program despite insisting that it was “obliterated” by the June 2025 US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Vice President JD Vance even claimed that there was evidence Iran may be trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Now that the war has started, the Trump administration is sending mixed messages about the goal. President Trump suggested in his first statement that he is pursuing regime change, and the initial round of US-Israeli attacks killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Rubio said on Monday that the goal was aimed at eliminating the “threat” posed by Iran’s missiles.

“The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy, particularly to naval assets. That is what it is focused on doing right now, and it’s doing quite successfully,” he said.

When asked for a timeline, Rubio said the war will last “as long as it takes” for the US to achieve its objectives.
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