‘We Would Suffer If…’: Marco Rubio Says Israel's Strike Plan Triggered US Attack On Iran

Last Updated:March 03, 2026, 07:41 IST

Rubio said that Iranian commanders had been instructed to automatically respond against US if Iran came under attack. “We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow,” he said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Washington’s decision to attack Iran was shaped by prior knowledge that Israel was preparing its own strike, arguing that the United States acted to prevent higher casualties among American forces.

“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 pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties," he said as quoted by news agency AFP.

The State Secretary said that Iranian commanders had been instructed to automatically respond against US forces if Iran came under attack. “We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow," he said, adding that if the US had waited and been hit first, officials would be questioned for failing to act.

“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" to hit alongside Israel, Rubio said.

Asked if the United States faced an imminent threat from Iran — a key threshold in the United States as Congress constitutionally has the power to declare war — Rubio again pointed to the Israeli plans.

“There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believed they would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us," Rubio said.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier said Israel carried out the strike in Tehran that killed Khamenei and other top officials after intelligence indicated they were meeting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the timing of the operation, saying Iran had begun building underground facilities that would soon make its ballistic missile and nuclear programs immune from attack. “If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future," Netanyahu told Fox News.

Despite backing the strike, Rubio said regime change was not the formal objective of the mission. “We hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government and establish a new future for that country. We would love for that to be possible," he said, adding “But the objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities and of their naval capabilities."

Rubio’s comments drew criticism from some US lawmakers, with Representative Joaquin Castro saying that it indicated that Israel “put US forces in harm’s way by insisting on attack on Iran."

“This is unacceptable of the President, and unacceptable of a country that calls itself our ally," Castro wrote on X.

The remarks came before the US military confirmed that its death toll in the conflict had risen to six, after two additional bodies were recovered from a facility struck by Iran in the region.

Tehran retaliated against the joint US-Israeli strikes — which killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with senior officials — by launching drones and missiles at US bases and assets across the Gulf.

(With inputs from agencies)

News world ‘We Would Suffer If…’: Marco Rubio Says Israel's Strike Plan Triggered US Attack On Iran

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