re: WSJ/NYT - US & Israel Strike Tehran

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Watch the entire thing in context.

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This was Rubio's actual argument for imminence, as the full clip shows. He pointed out that Iran's capacity for missile production exceeds our production level for anti-ballistic missile defenses, and the gap widened every month. Iran may have been about a year away from having so many ballistic missiles and drones that they could have pursued weapons-grade enrichment with impunity and openly developed nuclear weapons. The regime had already resorted to large-scale massacres of its own subjected people to maintain power; their "apocalyptic" theology would have encouraged them to use nuclear weapons against Israel and the US. Their refusal to discuss any limits on any of these ambitions became clear last week, and as Rubio argued, we needed to act while we still could.

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"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action" against Iran, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces" by the Iranian regime.

"And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties ... And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act," Rubio continued.

Rubio added later: "Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what."

The widely repeated translation: The U.S. couldn't stop its ally — a far smaller nation that America arms, funds and protects — from attacking Iran on Saturday. So the U.S. had to strike Iran, too.

Not quite, U.S. officials said later. Regardless of Israel, they said, Trump ordered the strikes because he felt Iran was negotiating a nuclear deal in bad faith, and the U.S. needed to destroy the country's offensive military infrastructure.

"This operation needed to happen," Rubio told reporters, because Iran was developing too many missiles too quickly and was rebuilding its nuclear capabilities.

…Reality check:The picture critics are painting — of a U.S. reluctantly pulled into war by a smaller ally — obscures the deep coordination between the two countries in the weeks before the strike.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been urging Trump to strike Iran since December — but Israeli officials say he wouldn't have moved without Trump's explicit approval.

It's highly unlikely Netanyahu would've struck Iran without Trump's green light, Israeli officials added. If Trump had preferred to keep negotiating, the strike would have been postponed.

Over the past year, Trump has repeatedly reined in Netanyahu from aggressive military operations, including his bombing campaign last year in Syria.

And Trump essentially forced the Israeli prime minister to accept a Gaza peace plan that resulted in Hamas releasing all of its remaining hostages and the remains of others.

Netanyahu pushed back Monday night, telling Fox News' Sean Hannity that Trump "can't be dragged" into anything — and that the president acts on his own judgment.

…Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online, wrote that those who think Rubio "said that Netanyahu forced the U.S. into war ... are conflating the question 'Why?' with the question of 'Why now?' ... Rubio was not trying to argue that Israel dragged the U.S. into this war."

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Trump said yesterday the plan was always 4-5 weeks minimum, and could go longer if needed

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He never said that they were going to be attacked by Israel and we knew about it, just that someone was going to attack Iran.

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