America attacked Iran because it was faced with the choice of being predator or prey, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday night.
In comments to the media that were posted on the State Department’s website, Rubio schooled media representatives on the need for Operation Epic Fury.
“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 preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act,” Rubio explained.
“There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believe they would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded,” he said.
Rubi added that “the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked — and by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us — we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.”
Rubio said the truth of that assumption was revealed by Iran’s response to the initial wave of attacks on Saturday.
“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 pre-positioned,” he said.
Rubio noted the bigger picture: Iran was building an arsenal of missiles that would stave off any attempt to rein in its nuclear ambitions.
“Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity,” he said.
“What they are trying to do and have been trying to do for a very long time is build a conventional weapons capability as a shield where they can hide behind, meaning there would come a point where they have so many conventional missiles, so many drones, and can inflict so much damage, that no one can do anything about their nuclear program,” Rubio continued.
Rubio said Iran has been out-producing its enemies.
“They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 of these missiles a month. Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month. They can build a hundred of these a month, not to mention the thousands of one-way attack drones that they also have,” he said.
He remarked that the Iranian capability is reflected in charred buildings across the Middle East.
“They’re attacking airports. They’re attacking hotels. They are hitting, not just military bases; they’re attacking our embassies directly. They’re attacking facilities that have nothing to do with war or with military,” he said.
“And that’s a weakened Iran. That’s an Iran despite years of sanction. Imagine a year from now or a year and a half from now the capabilities they would have to inflict damage on us. It’s an unacceptable risk, especially in the hands of a regime that’s run by radical clerics,” he said.
“The ayatollah is a radical — was a radical cleric. That entire regime is led by radical clerics who don’t make geopolitical decisions; they make decisions on the basis of theology — their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one. That has to be taken very seriously as well,” he said.
Rubio noted that while the Trump administration would like to see a regime with a different worldview emerge, that is not the goal of Operation Epic Fury.
“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 explained.
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