English transcript

States conducted this operation with a very clear goal in mind.

I haven't got a chance to see a lot of reporting.

I don't understand what the confusion is.

Let me explain it to you and I'll do it once again as clearly as possible,

perhaps you'll report it that way.

The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran's

short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their navy,

particularly to naval assets.

That is what it is focused on doing right now and it's doing quite successfully.

I'll leave it to the Pentagon and the Department of War to discuss the

tactics behind that and the progress that's being made.

That is the clear objective of this mission.

The second question I've been asked is: why now?

Well, there's two reasons why now.

The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone,

the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond

and respond against the United States.

The orders had been delegated down to the field commanders.

It was automatic and in fact it proved to be true

because in fact the, within an hour of the initial attack

on the leadership compound,

the missile forces in the south, and in the north for that matter,

had already been activated to launch.

In fact, the... those had already been pre-positioned.

The third is the assessment that was made

that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first

before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties.

And so the President made the very wise decision.

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 and perhaps even higher those killed.

And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.