President Donald Trump rejected claims that Israel had pulled the United States into the war with Iran on Tuesday, instead suggesting that he had \u201cforced their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s comments came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the United States entered the conflict because officials \u201cknew that there was going to be an Israeli action\u201d and expected to become embroiled as a result. Rubio\u2019s comments ignited questions about whether Trump was taking his cues from the Israelis<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first and I didn\u2019t want that to happen,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday during a press conference<\/a> with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. \u201cSo, if anything, I might have forced Israel\u2019s hand, but Israel was ready and we were ready.\u201d<\/p>\n The president\u2019s claims appeared to contradict reports from the Pentagon to Congress on Sunday that there was no intelligence<\/a> suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we didn\u2019t do what we\u2019re doing right now, you would have had a nuclear war and they would have taken out many countries because you know what? They\u2019re sick people,\u201d Trump told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cThey\u2019re mentally ill sick people. They\u2019re angry, they\u2019re crazy, they\u2019re sick.\u201d<\/p>\n While Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have denied suggestions that Israel steered the U.S. into the conflict, which has rapidly escalated tensions across the region, critics across the political spectrum<\/a> have continued to question the extent to which the United States\u2019 actions were influenced by Israel.<\/p>\n During the president\u2019s meeting with Merz, the German leader told reporters that the two countries had a shared desire to get rid of the \u201cterrible regime in Iran,\u201d with Trump adding that Germany had allowed U.S. forces land in \u201ccertain areas,\u201d though the U.S. was not asking Germany to provide troops.<\/p>\n The meeting followed a joint statement<\/a> on Sunday by France, Germany and the United Kingdom in which the three countries vowed to \u201ctake steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n While Republican lawmakers largely backed the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran Saturday morning, rising American casualties and suggestions by Trump that he had not ruled out sending troops into Iran<\/a> have spurred concern<\/a> from some about the potential for a drawn-out conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump rejected claims that Israel had pulled the United States into the war with Iran on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-501989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}