US President Donald Trump says he took the decision to launch a war against Iran because it was the “last, best chance” to stop the country’s regime.
Speaking at the White House for the first time since attacking Iran, Mr Trump said the US is continuing to carry out “large-scale combat operations”, with more than 1,250 targets already struck.
Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the coordinated attacks on Iran were driven by self-defence.
Faced with questions from reporters on whether the Trump administration needed Congressional approval, Mr Rubio reportedly said, “If we stood and waited for that attack [from Iran] to come first, before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made a very wise decision: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew 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”.
Iran continues to strike Israel and US assets in the Gulf as the number of casualties rises across the region amid intensifying Israeli and US attacks on Iran.
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