White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt upheld the Trump administration’s stance regarding the attack on Iran. Similar to her colleague, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, she also believes Trump had to strike due to an ‘imminent threat’ against Iran.
“Netanyahu had given the U.S. this information about where the Ayatollah would be with his deputies this Saturday,” a reporter asked in a press briefing with Leavitt. He was referencing a phone call allegedly made between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an article by Axios.
“How important was that information in the president making the decision to strike where and when he did?”
Leavitt thought that the information was important with regard to the timeline. She adds, “But I think the president, prior to that phone call, had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike the United States’ assets and our personnel in the region.”
Therefore, based on that ‘feeling’, Trump had to make the choice. The imminent threat Leavitt speaks of is practically based on vibes, but reports—both from other politicians and journalists—say otherwise.
One X user reacts to Leavitt, “Can you imagine the Republican reaction if a woman president went to war because she had a ‘feeling’?
Needless to say, if any of the former female presidential candidates said such a thing, it would be one of the defining moments of their term.
What’s the imminent threat?
Rubio, in an interview a day prior, said, “There was absolutely an imminent threat,” but when he explained, the threat he spoke of posed immediate harm to Israel and not to the United States.
According to Reuters, sources from the Pentagon say that the administration officials emphasized Iran’s ballistic missiles and proxy forces as imminent threats to U.S. interests. But they also claim that there was no intelligence of Tehran intending to strike the United States first.
In reality, the Trump administration is yet to reveal the ‘imminent threat’ that forced Trump’s hand.
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