Rubio promises punishment for Iran: 'Hardest hits are yet to come' - USA Today

The administration decided to act quickly because it was "abundantly clear" that if Iran came under attack from Israel, it was going to retaliate against the United States, Rubio said.

"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 causalities," Rubio said. "And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act."

Rubio said the intelligence provided the U.S. with enough to invoke action due to an "imminent threat."

"No matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen," he said. "Look at the damage they're doing now, and this is a weakened Iran, imagine a year from now."

With Americans divided, Congress readies war powers vote

In a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted over the weekend, 27% of Americans said that they approved of the strikes while 29% said they did not know and 43% said they disapproved.

"The American people have already made up their mind, which is they do not want United States in a war in the Middle East," Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, told USA TODAY in a March 1 interview. "And there is nothing that we can hear from this Trump administration at this point that's going to change the fact that Americans don't want this, and that the president is doing this against the will of the American people."

Kim, who was the Obama-era director for Iraq on White House National Security Council, said he believes that Congress should vote so that every lawmaker's stance is on record.

Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have pushed for votes this week on resolutions that would block Trump's ability to conduct additional strikes on Iran unless he has congressional approval. They've also said the administration needs to lay out its strategy for winning the war and address contradictory information about Iran's nuclear capabilities and the status of its ballistic missile program.

Rubio told reporters before the Monday briefing with top lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he doesn't understand "what the confusion" is around why the Trump administration preemptively struck the adversary it has repeatedly accused of trying to restart its nuclear program.

He said the U.S. is conducting an operation "to eliminate the threat of Iran's short-range ballistic missiles" and the threat posed by its navy.

"That is the clear objective of its mission," Rubio, a former Florida senator, said.

He argued that the Trump administration has followed the law when it comes to a requirement to notify Congress about military action.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said he agreed with the secretary of state. The Constitution, he said, is "purposely vague" about the division of war powers between the executive and legislative branches in order to allow presidents to make important decisions about national security.

"Anybody who thinks that Iran, then and now, was not and is not an immediate, apparent danger to the American people is either wrong, or they're taking some really strong drugs," Kennedy told USA TODAY.

Congressional leaders were informed of the strikes before they took place, Rubio said. And he said the administration fulfilled its requirement under the War Powers Act of 1973 to provide formal notification to lawmakers within 48 hours of beginning hostilities.

"We can't notify 535 members of Congress," Rubio said. "Congress can vote on whatever they want, but there's no law that requires us to do that."

Rubio spoke before he briefed a bipartisan group of lawmakers with high-level security clearance, known as Gang of Eight, on the conflict that Trump has said he expects to last for roughly four weeks. He argued, as he has in the past, that the War Powers Act is not constitutional.

Even so, the Trump administration complied with the law, he said. He briefed the top congressional leaders twice — once on the day of the State of the Union and once on the evening before the strike. And he was about to brief them again.

Democrats: No evidence of 'imminent threat'

Democrats came away from their conversations with Rubio and other top administration officials woefully dissatisfied.

“I found the answers completely and totally insufficient,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber's top Democrat. He said Rubio's latest Gang of Eight briefing “raised many more questions than it answered.”

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told USA TODAY after the meeting that the administration’s communication with Congress about the strikes was “much better” compared to its other recent military actions. But, he argued, the White House still flouted the law.

“There was no imminent threat against the United States,” he said.

Trump argues Iran posed urgent threat

Trump argued in a video announcing the strikes, and again in public remarks at the White House, that the United States faced an urgent threat from Iran.

Laying out his justification for the strikes, Trump said during an East Room event that Iran's ballistic missile program was also growing "rapidly and dramatically" and it "posed a very clear, colossal threat" to the United States and its forces stationed at overseas bases.

Tehran already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and "would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America," Trump said in his remarks on March 2.

Trump signaled earlier in the day that the U.S. was preparing to launch an even bigger wave of attacks on Iran.

“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon," the president told CNN host Jake Tapper in a phone call.

On Capitol Hill, his secretary of state echoed those comments. He told reporters the most punishing phase of the campaign hadn't even begun yet. Without providing details, Rubio said, "The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military. The next phase will be ever more punishing on Iran than it is right now."

"Someone was screaming, 'how long will it take.' I don't know how long it will take, we have objectives, we will do this as long as it takes to achieve those objectives," Rubio told reporters. "And we will achieve those objectives."

The purpose of the administration's campaign is to destroy Tehran's navy and its ballistic missile capabilities, he said, which he argued Iran was using as a shield for its nuclear program.

"And while we would love to see a new regime, the bottom line is, no matter who governs this country, a year from now, they're not going to have these ballistic missiles and these drones to threaten us," Rubio said.