Rubio claims US faced 'imminent threat' that forced Iran bombing campaign

Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued Monday that the U.S. faced a significant and "imminent threat" that prompted strikes in Iran.

Reporters asked Rubio in Washington, D.C., whether Congress was notified about the national security threats, and Rubio said he told the "gang of eight" leaders that strikes were coming.

"There absolutely was an imminent threat," Rubio said Monday afternoon.

He claimed that the Iranian military was growing its nuclear weapons program and planning to launch attacks against America and its allies in the region. In the days since, Rubio said Iran has attacked civilian areas in the Middle East in retaliatory strikes since the attacks started Saturday.

"We would love to see this regime be replaced. And ultimately, as the president has said, he would love for the people of Iran to use this as an opportunity to rise up and remove these leaders," Rubio said. "They've been wanting to remove them for a long time, we've seen successive waves of protests and we've seen them slaughter people. But the objective of this mission is to make sure they don't have these weapons that can threaten us and our allies in the region. That's why we're doing what we're doing now."

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

Rubio said he knew that oil prices would be impacted as a result of the strikes and that the Trump administration was aiming to mitigate against that.

"They are a terroristic regime," Rubio said. "They sponsor terrorism and they participate in terrorism."

He did not know how long the conflict would last.

"The hardest hits are yet to come from the US military," Rubio said. "The next phase will be even more punishing than it is right now."