UPDATE - 'All personnel are accounted for' after drone strike near US Consulate in Dubai: Rubio

ADDS MORE REMARKS FROM US SECRETARY OF STATE

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that "all personnel are accounted for” after a drone struck a parking lot adjacent to the US Consulate in Dubai.

"The last update I had with seconds before getting before these cameras was that a drone unfortunately struck a parking lot adjacent to the Chancellery building and then set off a fire in that place.

"All personnel are accounted for. As you're aware, we began drawing down personnel from our diplomatic facilities in advance of this," Rubio told reporters before briefing congressional leaders at the Capitol.

Tensions have escalated across the region since the US and Israel launched a large-scale attack against Iran on Saturday, killing nearly 800 people, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran responded with drone and missile strikes on targets in Israel and Gulf countries, which are home to US military assets.

Rubio said US embassies and their diplomatic facilities were under "direct attack from a terroristic regime."

He said that around 9,000 Americans had evacuated the Middle East since Saturday.

"We are confident that we are going to be able to assist every American, as I told you right now. We have a little over 1,500, maybe closer to 1,600 Americans requesting assistance," he added.

When asked why the ongoing Operation Epic Fury against Iran happened this weekend, Rubio said this weekend presented "a unique opportunity to take joint action against this threat."

"We wanted this to have maximum success...This weekend, acting at this time, gave us the highest probability of success in achieving those objectives," he added.

He was also asked about his remarks Monday at Congress, where he told reporters that the US launched preemptive strikes against Iran because officials were aware of an impending Israeli attack and believed Tehran would retaliate against US forces in the region.

"Somebody asked me a question yesterday, 'Did we go in because of Israel?'...and I said, 'No.' I told you this had to happen anyway. President (Donald Trump) made a decision — and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program," he said.

"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,” he told reporters.

Trump denied Tuesday that Israel forced his hand into launching military strikes on Iran, saying instead: "No, I might have forced their hand.”

"We were ⁠having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” he said, referring to Iran.

“If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly ​about that," he told reporters at the White House during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.