Trump says he ordered strike on Iran over attack fears

By Nandita Bose and Andreas Rinke

WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he ordered U.S. forces to join Israel's attack on Iran because he believed Iran was about to strike the United States, his latest explanation amid conflicting accounts from the administration of how the war started.

"I might have forced their (Israel’s) hand," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. "We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that."

Trump's comments about the run-up to the war were at odds with an earlier account from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told reporters on Monday that the United States launched the attack because of fears that Iran would retaliate in response to planned Israeli action against Tehran.

"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 casualties," Rubio said.

Trump on Tuesday said he believed Iran was on the brink of launching attacks, presenting no evidence to support his view, after U.S. negotiations with Iran last Thursday in Geneva. Iran had described those talks as positive with more planned in the days ahead.

"It's something that had to be done," Trump said, taking questions from reporters in a public setting for the first time since the U.S. attacks began. He previously had discussed the attacks in two brief videos and one-on-one interviews with select journalists over the weekend but did not give a televised address to the nation.

Trump also said on Tuesday he could live with higher oil prices for a period of time because it was more important to remove what he said was an imminent threat from Iran. Gasoline prices in the United States have jumped as a result of uncertainty about oil supplies with the conflict showing no signs of ending soon.

Trump described the war effort as successful thus far against many Iranian naval and air targets. "Just about everything has been knocked out," he said.

Iran has responded to the attack by firing missiles and drones at neighboring Arab states and strangling shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for energy trade.

But Trump predicted Tehran will eventually lose its capability to continue lobbing missiles due to a sustained assault against them.

"They've shot a lot of them, and we're knocking out a lot," he said.