Rubio's Rationale on Iran Strikes Gets Messier, as Congress Demands Answers

In the span of 48 hours, the Trump Administration has offered starkly different explanations for why it launched a sweeping military strike on Iran. Late Tuesday, as the U.S was closing embassies and urging Americans to flee the region in response to Iran’s escalating counterattacks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio found himself further litigating what prompted the initial wave of strikes four days earlier. “No. Your statement is false,” Rubio told a reporter who was summarizing his comments from Monday, in which he had suggested that the timing of the U.S. strikes was guided by Israel’s plans to attack Iran, which could have prompted “an attack against American forces.” If the United States did not act preemptively, he had previously warned, American casualties would be higher. But by Tuesday, Trump had effectively rewritten the narrative. Appearing in the Oval Office, the President rejected the idea that Israel had pressured him. “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” he said, adding that he believes it was Iran that was about to strike. “It was my opinion that they were going to attack first… They were going to attack if we didn’t do it.” Rubio further walked back his own statement that afternoon, as he headed into classified briefings before Congress that were focused in part on the Administration’s conflicting rationales. The mixed messages have left lawmakers, allies, and even some Trump allies struggling to discern the precise legal and strategic basis for a war that has already led to the deaths of six American service members and hundreds of others across the Middle East.  Maine Sen. Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, told TIME on Tuesday after the briefing that he was “disturbed” by Rubio’s comments. “The implication is that we’re delegating the decision of whether this country goes to war to another country,” he said. “That’s a breathtaking assertion. When I woke up to the news Saturday morning, my first question was, why now? And the original justifications given was the nuclear threat and those kinds of things—all of them have just sort of fallen by the wayside. I think [Israel] was the precipitating factor, and I think that’s inappropriate.” Under U.S. law, the President may use military force without congressional authorization only in response to a direct, imminent threat. A strike to prevent future retaliation triggered by an ally’s action presents a less clear case that some in Congress believe proves Trump ignored Congress’ constitutional authority on the matter.  In recent days, Administration officials had also cited Iran’s advancing nuclear capabilities, ballistic missile production, and the possibility that it would soon acquire long-range strike capacity. Trump himself had previously asserted that Iran was going to be able to threaten the United States directly “soon,” despite American intelligence assessments casting doubt on such scenarios. In a legally mandated notification to Congress sent Tuesday, Trump offered yet another framing: that the strikes were undertaken to protect the homeland and U.S. forces, advance national interests, and act in “collective self-defense” of regional allies, including Israel.  The result is an administration that, in less than 10 days, has articulated multiple and at times contradictory theories of imminent danger. Congress is set to vote on War Powers resolutions in both chambers, an effort by lawmakers to reassert their constitutional authority over decisions of war. The measures, which are unlikely to pass both chambers, would require the Trump Administration to terminate hostilities against Iran within a specified period unless lawmakers explicitly authorize continued military action. “I’m more convinced now that this is going to be open ended and forever,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters as he left the briefing. “They told us in that room that there are gonna be more Americans that are gonna die, that they’re not gonna be able to stop these drones. We have to have a debate in the U.S. Senate on an authorization of military.”