No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran

By Philip Klein

Monday, March 02, 2026

 

A large cadre of commentators have been arguing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragged U.S. President Donald Trump unwillingly into war with Iran. At first blush, this theory received a boost from comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday. But listening to Rubio’s full comments in context, it’s pretty clear that he wasn’t advancing this claim.

 

In his remarks, Rubio made two main points. One was about the purpose of the war against Iran, which he said was to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile threat, attack drones, and the threat its navy poses to global shipping. He then said, “The second question I’ve been asked is, Why now?”

 

In answering this question, Rubio said, “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.”

 

This is the clip that is being taken as proof that Rubio said that Netanyahu forced the U.S. into war. But those making this argument are conflating the question “Why?” with the question “Why now?” In fact, if you watch the full press conference, Rubio makes this clear. At about the five-minute mark, he is asked explicitly whether he was saying that the U.S. was forced to attack Iran because of an impending Israeli action, and he responds “no.” He goes on to say:

 

That’s the question of why now, but this operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it, because they could hold the whole world hostage. Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. 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.

 

Rubio said that Iran was producing ballistic missiles at the rate of 100 per month and that missile interceptors could only be produced at a rate of six or seven a month. If Iran’s arsenal grew large enough, he said, it would be able to make it too costly to strike its nuclear program at a later date than it would be now.

 

Given the full context, it’s pretty clear what he was saying. Last June, the U.S. let Israel take the lead in striking Iran, and then joined later. This time, the U.S. made the determination that a simultaneous attack would better protect American lives. But on the higher order question of whether to launch an attack on Iran, the administration believed that it had to happen no matter what.

 

Israel and the U.S. have been sharing intelligence closely throughout this process. It was the CIA that obtained intelligence about when and where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be meeting with top officials and provided it to the Israelis. Trump himself wrote on Truth Social that the supreme leader “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems.” Why on earth would the U.S. share intelligence as to the time and location of Khamenei if the U.S. was not on board with attacking Iran?

 

Trump isn’t exactly shy about pressuring people into doing what he wants. Last June, he had Israel pull back planes that were on their way for a bombing run on Iran just before the cease-fire took hold. He pressured Netanyahu into accepting a cease-fire in Gaza that forced a number of concessions on Israel’s part. Trump has, throughout his career in public office, said that he didn’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons. He spent the past several months arguing that if Iran didn’t willingly give up their pursuit, he would attack. How low does one’s opinion of Trump have to be to assume that he didn’t actually want to attack Iran but said all of this publicly and sent a massive amount of U.S. military hardware to the region because he simply could not tell Netanyahu no?

 

People are free to agree or disagree with Trump’s decision, but it’s patently clear that Rubio was not trying to argue that Israel dragged the U.S. into this war.