Secretary of State Marco Rubio expanded on the reasons why the Trump administration chose to launch Operation Epic Fury against Iran, including knowing that Israel already planned an operation.
“So, the United States conducted this operation with a very clear goal in mind. I haven’t gotten a chance to see a lot of reporting. I don’t understand what the confusion is. Let me explain it to you and I’ll do it, once again, as clearly as possible. Perhaps you’ll report it that way. 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. I will leave it to the Pentagon and the Department of War to discuss the tactics behind that and the progress being made. That is the clear objective of this mission.”
“The second question that’s been asked is, why now? Well, there’s two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that, if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The orders have been delegated down to the field commanders, it was automatic and in fact, it beared to be true because, in fact, the — within one 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 la launch. In fact, those are even pre-positioned.”
“The third is the assessment that was made that, if we stood and waited for that attack to come first, before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties and so, the President made the very wise decision. 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.”
BREAKING: Secretary of State Marco Rubio on why the U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran…
“So, the United States conducted this operation with a very clear goal in mind. I haven’t gotten a chance to see a lot of reporting. I don’t understand what the confusion is.… pic.twitter.com/qu9bRli2n2
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 2, 2026
.jpg%2F500px-Donald_Trump_(53953173435).jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=1eb09485c9f1cd57919082677e15526c735bd86eb8152493e737ff4709ce030d)
