Israel Did Not Drag the US Into War

“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” President Donald Trump exclaimed to a journalist on March 3. He was answering a question posed by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott, who had just asked the Commander in Chief whether Israel had “pulled the United States into war.”

“Based on the way the negotiation [with Iran] was going, I think they were going to attack first,” Trump replied. “And I didn’t want that to happen.”

The President is completely right.

After a sound bite from Secretary of State Marco Rubio went viral, many on the isolationist right and the pro-Palestinian, “anti-war” left claimed that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, had dragged the world’s most powerful military into a regional conflict.

“We knew 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 stated on March 2.

“So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand,” responded popular conservative pundit Matt Walsh in a post on X.

But, as often occurs in cyberspace, Rubio’s comments were taken wildly out of context.

During the same press conference, Rubio was asked a similar question again: “Was the US forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?” Rubio set the record straight unequivocally.

“No … No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen … This had to happen no matter what.”

The Secretary of State is correct. His answer about Israel triggering the operation implied that it was only a matter of when, not if, the mission would be undertaken by the US.

American military power had been amassing in the Middle East for months, and some reports said that planning for the combined strikes began as far back as December. Other reports suggested that the operation was intended to begin a week earlier, but the conditions weren’t right.

Intelligence provided to Israel by the Central Intelligence Agency, combined with actionable intelligence gathered for years by Israel’s Mossad, suggested that February 28, at around 10 am Tehran time, was the optimal starting line for the mission. Why? Because former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was due to meet with nearly 50 of his closest advisors and other senior leaders, above ground. According to The Wall Street Journal, those were the circumstances that nailed down a start date for the ongoing conflict.

That’s why commentators across the aisle got Rubio’s statement so very wrong. In fact, Israel has shown in the past that it would comply willingly should its friends in Washington wish for IDF military action not to go forward.

On June 24, 2025, the Israeli Air Force cancelled planned strikes on Iran after Trump announced that he had told Netanyahu to bring the pilots home and that a ceasefire was in place. The strikes were planned in retaliation for a vicious attack on a Beer Sheva residential building that killed several civilians. Even then, Israel respected the wishes of the United States.

The ongoing conflict in Iran is a combined effort between what US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Brad Cooper called, “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the US and Israel,” comments later echoed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. It began with full coordination and will end the same way.

As Hegseth said, “only the United States of America military could lead this — only us. But when you add in the Israeli Defense Forces — a devastatingly capable force — the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.”

Aaron Goren is a research analyst and editor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).