Rubio on Iran strikes

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday said the U.S. attacked Iran "preemptively" to protect American forces from retaliation after learning Israel was preparing to strike, calling it an "imminent threat."

"The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded," he told reporters on Capitol Hill ahead of a briefing with top congressional leaders.

"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."

Secretary Rubio said the objective of the strikes are to degrade Iran's ballistic missile capabilities, which he argued could be used to shield its nuclear program.

"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," he said. "Meaning there will 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."