President Donald Trump is pushing back hard against critics who claim that Israel dragged the United States into the escalating war with Iran.

On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress on President Donald Trump’s decisive strikes against Iran’s military infrastructure.

According to Rubio, the regime had already delegated launch authority to field commanders. Within an hour of the initial strike on a leadership compound, missile forces in both the north and south were activated.

Intelligence assessments concluded that waiting for Iran to strike first would result in significantly higher American casualties.

“Within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north, for that matter, had already been activated to launch. In fact, those had already been prepositioned.”

“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties,” Rubio explained. “The President made the very wise decision.”

He emphasized that U.S. officials knew Israeli action was imminent, and knew retaliation against American forces would follow. The only strategic option, Rubio argued, was to act first.

Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, President Trump made it clear that while his administration maintains a historic and unbreakable bond with Israel, he was the one in the driver’s seat when it came to neutralizing the threat from Tehran.

“No,” Trump said when asked if Israel forced his hand to launch these strikes against Iran.

According to the president, negotiations with Tehran were going nowhere, and he believed Iran was getting ready to launch missiles.

Reporter:
“Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did that get the United States into this war?”

President Trump:
“No, I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.

We have great negotiators—great people, people who do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. Based on the way the negotiations were going, I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen.

So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready, and we were ready, and we’ve had a very, very powerful impact.”

WATCH:

The post TRUMP SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT: Says Israel Didn’t Force My Hand on Iran — “If Anything, I Might Have Forced Israel’s Hand” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.