US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday clarified comments he made a day earlier, which were misinterpreted as though he had meant that Israel had dragged the US into war with Iran.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, ahead of classified briefings to the full Senate and House, Rubio was pressed about his comment and about comments made by President Donald Trump during his Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
During that meeting, Trump was asked by a reporter whether Israel had "forced" his hand on Iran and replied, "If anything, I might have forced Israel's hand, but Israel was ready and we were ready."
Responding to questions from reporters about this, Rubio said on Tuesday, “I told you, this had to happen anyway, the president made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program."
He added, “Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work … the decision was made to strike".
“The bottom line is this. We, the president, determined we were not going to get hit first," clarified Rubio.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump stated that it is "too late" for Iran to seek negotiations now, on the fourth day of the war between the Islamic Republic and the combined forces of America and Israel.
"Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said 'Too Late!'" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
On Monday, speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, revealed that, during his talks with Iran on a potential nuclear deal, the Iranians boasted of their ability to make 11 nuclear bombs.
Witkoff also stated that it was clear during the talks that the Iranians were not interested in reaching a deal.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60 percent, and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance. So they were proud of it. They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs," Witkoff told Hannity.
“It was pretty silly, but they thought they could strong-arm us," recalled Witkoff, who added, “You know, President Trump sent me and Jared [Kushner] there to to really determine on his behalf whether they were serious about doing a deal that that addressed his objectives, which are elimination of their of their missile program, elimination of their advocacy and support for proxies, which is destabilizing the entire Middle East, elimination of their Navy so we can have freedom of the seas and not be threatened with the shutdown of the Gulf of Hormuz. And finally, no nuclear enrichment that can get them to weapons grade, which means no nuclear bomb."
He continued, “And we went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them. And it was it was it was very, very clear that it was going to be impossible probably by the end of the second meeting. But we then went back for the third meeting just to give it the last college try. And, of course, they thought they wanted us to report positivity. It was not positive, that meeting."