Commentators across political spectrum, including MAGA base, seize on Rubio’s words amid shifting war justifications
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives to brief Senators on US military action in Iran, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC [AFP]
By Joseph Stepansky
Published On 4 Mar 2026
Washington, DC – On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided a looping justification for the US launching a war against Iran: Israel was planning to strike Iran, which would have prompted Tehran to strike the US assets in the region, requiring Washington to launch preemptive strikes on Iran.
Even as the administration of US President Donald Trump has sought to roll back claims made by several officials in recent days, they have continued to spark dismay across the political spectrum.
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Rubio’s statement was particularly notable, given the assessment by many Iran analysts that the US-Israel war, which has led to regional retaliation from Iran, serves the interests not of Washington, but of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Washington is seen as having outsized leverage over Israel, to which it has provided more than $300bn in military aid since 1948, including $21bn during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Trump, when asked about Rubio’s statement on Tuesday, appeared to offer a different characterisation, saying he launched the war because he “thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked”.
“They [Iran] were getting ready to attack Israel. They were gonna attack others,” he said.
The US president has spent the days since launching the initial strikes on Saturday arguing that the holistic threat posed by Iran justified the US-Israeli strikes, a position that experts say likely stands in contravention of both US and international law. The administration has provided scant evidence of a planned attack on US assets or that either Iran’s nuclear or ballistic programmes offered an immediate threat.
Rubio on Monday also sought to distance himself from his statements, claiming his words had been taken out of context.
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