Purpose of ‘preemptive strike due to possibility of Iranian retaliation’
Trump calls for “regime change”
Minister of National Defense draws a line saying, “This is not a war for regime change.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is holding a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on the 2nd. AP Yonhap News
Regarding the ‘imminent threat’ mentioned by US President Donald Trump as a justification for attacking Iran, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the threat meant ‘an Iranian attack on Israel’, raising questions about the legitimacy of this attack again. Some point out that the conflicting opinions of members of the U.S. administration regarding the purpose of military operations are also problematic.
Before giving a closed-door intelligence briefing on military operations against Iran to eight congressional leaders on the 2nd (local time), Secretary Rubio said, “We knew Israel would act and that it would hasten Iranian attacks targeting U.S. forces in the Middle East,” and added, “If we do not act proactively before they (Iran) attack us, there will be more casualties.”
The idea is that Israel preemptively attacked Iran because Iran could retaliate against the United States if it attacked Iran. It is also a statement that can be interpreted to mean that the ‘imminent threat’ was a threat faced by Israel, not the United States. President Trump launched the operation on the 28th of last month and said, “We will protect the American people by eliminating the imminent threat coming from the Iranian regime.”
Secretary Rubio also said that the goal of this military operation is to “destroy (Iran’s) ballistic missile capability, make it impossible to rebuild it, and make it impossible for it to secretly retain its nuclear program.” This is a different explanation from President Trump’s call for “(the Iranian people) to take control of the government,” indicating his will to change the regime. U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on the same day, “This is not a so-called regime change war.”
Representative Mark Warner, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who attended the intelligence briefing that day, pointed out that the Trump administration’s message was inconsistent, making it unclear what the ultimate goal of this operation was. Warner told CNN that he had heard “at least four different goals” over the past eight or nine days, and that “I’m not sure which of them will have to be achieved to get us to the final stage.” He listed the goals he had heard of, including ‘destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities,’ ‘change the regime,’ and ‘sink the Iranian fleet.’
Representative Warner also warned, “There was no imminent threat posed by Iran to the American mainland. There was only a threat to Israel. If the threat to Israel is equated with the threat to the United States, we are entering unprecedented and uncharted territory.”
In relation to this, House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican) claimed that this operation was “defensive,” saying, “If we had waited for (Iran’s) reaction rather than acting first, the losses would have been much greater.”
