Image: Famous Iraq War widow photo
Secretary of State Marco Rubio last Monday essentially admitted that the US attack on Iran was prompted by the Israeli decision to attack. Rubio said in a press conference:
"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 pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,"
Rubio did not say how he knew that Israel would target the United States if Israel attacked Iran. In 2025, Iran launched retaliatory attacks against Israel after Israel attacked what it said were Iranian weapons facilities, but no American targets in the Middle East were attacked or service members killed.
In the meantime, US soldier casualties in the undeclared war have risen to six, and more are seriously wounded. Both Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would not rule out ground troops.
The UK Guardian reports:
"In the first public remarks by an administration official since the war began on Saturday, Hegseth also said that the US did not have "boots on the ground" in Iran but that he wouldn't speculate what "we will or will not do". He also said that four US service members had been killed by a ballistic missile that managed to penetrate allied air defenses. But speaking soon afterwards, Donald Trump said he did not rule out sending US ground troops into Iran "if they were necessary.--
In admitting that the "imminent threat" that the US faced was of it's own making through it's massive military support for Israel, Rubio highlighted the cost of "foreign entanglements," as President Washington warned of in his Farewell Address. And although the US is now deploying troops to fight Israel's enemies, Israel deployed no troops to the aid of the US in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars.
