Who Set the Clock?

Examining what made the Iran attack imminent

This is a novel reality of the war in Iran: A foreign government’s operational decision set the clock. Not American interests, not intelligence about an Iranian action against American targets, and not a deliberate presidential finding. Israel moved, and the United States followed its clock.

There has been considerable debate about this. Two exchanges with the Secretary of State illustrate the friction.

EXCHANGE ONE:

QUESTION: Does Congress have to weigh in? Does Congress have to weigh in? Is the President declaring war, and does Congress have to weigh in?

SECRETARY RUBIO: No. Well, what —

QUESTION: And was there an imminent threat? Did you tell lawmakers that there was an imminent threat?

SECRETARY RUBIO: There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked – and we believe they would be attacked – that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded because the Department of War assessed that if we did that, if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked – and by someone else, Israel attacked them, they hit us first, and we waited for them to hit us – we would suffer more casualties and more deaths. We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties and more loss of life.

QUESTION: Are you saying the U.S. was forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?

SECRETARY RUBIO: No, first – well, two things I would say. Number one is: no matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen. That’s the question of why now. But 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.

Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. 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.

In Exchange 1, the “imminent threat” Secretary Rubio describes is entirely Israel-contingent. The threat isn’t Iran in the abstract. It’s Iran retaliating against US forces after Israel attacked Iran. Remove Israeli action, and there’s no imminent threat.

Rubio adds a second justification in Exchange 1—the “line of immunity” argument, Iran approaching a missile threshold in a year or so—and that one stands independent of Israel. That’s on a different timeline though. And it’s secondary in importance, which is why he says second and says this: “But this had to happen no matter what.” If the reasons were coequal, he would have used the word “and this had to happen...”

So the question is? If Israel wasn’t going to move, could something have happened in that year long period before the “line of immunity” that could have stopped war? Or, did Israel give the US a nudge it wanted to attack Iran, because, as Secretary Rubio says, the president believed it had to happen anyway.

A preemptive strike predicated on an ally’s action is easier to defend than a preemptive strike predicated on your own intelligence assessment that a threat is growing and will eventually become unmanageable. The first sounds reactive and heroic-- you’re defending Americans and an ally. The second sounds like a choice—and choices require justification, congressional consultation, a public case. Israel’s decision to move converted the second kind of strike into the first kind. It made the situation “imminent,” and that triggers emergency Presidential action. An imminent threat, not just a growing one.

The President sensed the problem. When asked if Israel had forced his hand, Trump said: “No. I might have forced Israel’s hand.” He is claiming causation. He and his Secretary of State cannot both be right about who set the clock.

Tom, I told my wife I wouldn’t get in a fight with Bruiser Joe, but if you, Tom, provoke Bruiser Joe to hit you, what am I going to do, just stand by?

Secretary Rubio was asked about these two rationales yesterday.

EXCHANGE 2:

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, yesterday you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that’s why we needed to get involved. Today the President said that —

SECRETARY RUBIO: No.

QUESTION: — Iran was going to get —

SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, your statement’s false. So that’s not what he – I was asked very specifically – were you there yesterday?

QUESTION: Yes. I asked a question.

SECRETARY RUBIO: Okay. No, did – were you the one that – because somebody asked me a question yesterday – did we go in because of Israel. And I said – you asked me that, you, that follow up. And I said no. I told you this had to happen anyway. The President made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The President systemically – made a decision to systematically destroy this terroristic capability that they had, and we carried that out. I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once the President made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations, and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them.

That’s what I said yesterday, and you guys need to play it. And if you’re going to play these statements, you need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do. All right?

Was the secretary clear in his first answer? Not exactly. (Or, not the way he subsequently wanted to be!)

If Secretary Rubio wanted to be as clear as possible in his first answer, he could have sequenced the rationales in the opposite order.¹ Lead with the strategic case—Iran approaching the line of immunity, the window closing, the President’s decision that negotiations had failed—and then add the Israeli contingency as a complicating factor that affected timing. Something like: We had already determined this had to happen. When we became aware of Israeli intentions, that accelerated our timeline and required us to act preemptively to protect our forces.

That construction keeps the strategic rationale as the load-bearing wall and relegates Israel to a scheduling problem. Instead he built it the other way—led with the Israeli-triggered threat, then tried to escape it with “but.” The architecture of the answer revealed the architecture of the decision.

The “line of immunity” rationale is safer political ground because it sounds like a considered presidential decision about a long-term threat. That’s the kind of thing presidents claim inherent authority to act on. But the Israel-triggered rationale sounds more like: another country put us in a position where we felt we had no choice. That’s a much harder case to make to Congress, and a much more alarming precedent—it means any ally with aggressive intentions can effectively conscript American military power by creating facts on the ground.

So it was some combination, which leaves us with questions about what the US could have done if they didn’t act on Israel’s timetable. One answer is sitting in the region right now: nearly 6,500 Americans who can’t find a flight home. The State Department has told Americans to leave 15 different countries—including the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—but over 21,000 flights have been cancelled across major Gulf hubs. The administration that had exquisite intelligence about Iranian missile trajectories apparently had less foresight about how its own citizens were going to get out; for days, the State Department hotline actually told stranded callers not to “rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure.” The State Department does not seem to have been as prepared to deal with their evacuation as the other parts of the administration were prepared to deal with the attack.

1. Which is what people do when they are listing items in order of importance.