JTA — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio inflamed critics of the US-Israel war on Iran on Monday when he suggested that Israel had pulled the United States into the conflict.

“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 in Washington.

After a reporter asked Rubio to clarify whether the US was forced to strike Iran because of Israel’s plans, the secretary said no.

“This operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year or a year and a half, would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage,” Rubio said.

“Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what,” he added.

The comments were sensitive because allegations that the United States is beholden to Israel have gripped both the far right and far left in recent years.

And despite his clarification, Rubio’s first comment caught on among skeptics of the war from across the ideological spectrum.

“Secretary Rubio says the quiet part out loud: this is an unnecessary war of choice,” tweeted Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Jewish progressive from California. “Israel forced our hand – there was no imminent threat to the United States.”

“Instead of talking Israel out of going to war,” she added, US President Donald Trump “went along with it and put US lives at risk.”

The conservative commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, shared a video of Rubio’s initial statement and tweeted, “So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said.”

For their part, Trump and Netanyahu both reject the idea that the war serves........

© The Times of Israel