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The Trump administration has offered an array of conflicting justifications for the war with Iran since the bombs started falling on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel.

The latest came on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump said that he launched the war because he believed that Iran was about to attack Israel and “others.”

The Trump administration has offered an array of conflicting justifications for the war with Iran since the bombs started falling on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel.

The latest came on Tuesday, when President Donald Trump said that he launched the war because he believed that Iran was about to attack Israel and “others.”

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to nuclear talks with Iran, “and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they ​were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”

(This is despite the fact that Trump administration officials reportedly acknowledged to Congress on Sunday that there was no intelligence to suggest that Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first. Not to mention, and as the Pentagon stated in a briefing on Monday, the United States began building up its military presence in the region for possible action weeks ago. And Trump had been threatening military action against Iran since early January.)

But less than 24 hours before Trump offered this assessment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States had acted preemptively because it knew that Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Washington expected Iran to retaliate by attacking U.S. forces.

“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,” Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. However, Rubio declined to say that Israel had forced the United States to act, noting that the U.S. operation “had to happen no matter what.” The impending Israeli action, he said, simply explains why the U.S. acted when it........

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