SECRETARY RUBIO: All right. I have a couple updates for you. The State Department is now actively, as it has been now for the last 72 hours, implementing our plans to help Americans in the Middle East be able to depart. As of a few minutes ago, before I left, 9,000 Americans have been able to leave the region since the start of this war. We have about 1,500 Americans that are requesting assistance with departure. We have identified and continued to identify charter flights, military flight options, and expanded commercial flight options, meaning working with the airlines to send bigger airplanes with more seats, and a combination of those three things. The impediment we're facing now, in many cases - we've had a couple instances in which we have planes in the air and on the way, and unfortunately the airspace gets closed and they have to turn back around. So we're working through those challenges.
Here's the message I want to deliver Americans who are in the Middle East and in need of assistance: It is very important - and I ask this of the networks as well - it is important for you to, please, put both the website and the phone numbers on your screens, because we need - we need to know where you are. We need to know - we need to have contact information for Americans that need assistance. They have to register with us, because as these options begin to open up, and as they open up, we have to be able to call you; we have to be able to reach you; we have to be able to know where you're staying so we can get this information to you and coordinate appropriately. And it'll be a variety of methods: charter flights, military flights and transports, expanded commercial opportunities, and in some cases land routes that will allow them to go to neighboring countries who might have open airports at that point.
So it's a lot of different things here that need to happen in order to move people. But it all starts by knowing that you're there. It all starts by knowing that, where you are and how we can get ahold of you. So I'm asking the networks and all of the media outlets, please publicize the two phone numbers that we've put out, as well as the website, so people can contact us and register. We've had thousands of people call already. As I've said, we've identified 1,500, almost 1,600 that are requesting assistance with departure. But we need you to, please, be able to identify that.
As I came in, I also saw the media reports about Dubai's consulate. 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. In the cases, for example, of Beirut, we basically drew down to a bare bones, as well as in Baghdad and in Erbil and in a couple other posts as well. So we've been very fortunate, obviously. But our embassies and our diplomatic facilities are under direct attack from a terroristic regime.
With an update, I will obviously refer you to the Department of War. Suffice it to say that our objectives remain, as they've been identified from the beginning and by the President laid out clearly yesterday: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and we will not allow Iran to hide behind the immunity of a massive short-term[1]* ballistic missile inventory or the ability to make them or launch them. And so CENTCOM, in a joint operations, is carrying out a systematic destruction of their missile belt, destruction of their launchers, and destruction of their ability to make these, as well as the destruction of their navy. From what I've been told by the Department of War, everything is on or ahead of schedule and proceeding on these objectives. We have every confidence in the world that these objectives will be achieved.
The last point I would make is - and I said this yesterday and I repeat - what's about to - you're about to see - we're going to unleash Chiang on these people in the next few hours and days. You're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and in the intensity of these attacks, as, frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it and take away its ability to threaten its neighbors or hide behind a zone of immunity that allows them to develop their nuclear ambitions.
This terroristic, radical, cleric-led regime cannot be ever allowed to have nuclear weapons. We saw what they were willing to do to their own people. They were willing to slaughter their own people in the streets. Imagine what they would do to us. Imagine what they would do to others. Under President Trump that will never, ever happen. All right.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, yesterday you said - yesterday you talked about Israel - Mr. Secretary, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Secretary —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Please, guys. I can't hear them all. Yes.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, yesterday you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get involved. Today the President said that —
SECRETARY RUBIO: No.
QUESTION: — Iran was going to get —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, your statement's false. So that's not what he - I was asked very specifically - were you there yesterday?
QUESTION: Yes. I asked a question.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Okay. No, did - were you the one that - because somebody asked me a question yesterday - did we go in because of Israel. And I said - you asked me that, you, that follow up. And I said no. I told you this had to happen anyway. The President made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The President systemically - made a decision to systematically destroy this terroristic capability that they had, and we carried that out. I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once the President made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations, and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them.
That's what I said yesterday, and you guys need to play it. And if you're going to play these statements, you need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want to do. All right?
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary —
QUESTION: This is your statement - what is your statement?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Go ahead.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary —
SECRETARY RUBIO: Go ahead.
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, what do you make of the War Powers resolution that's being considered here in Congress?
SECRETARY RUBIO: I mean, the Congress votes on those. They can if they want. There's mechanisms for it, and we've complied with the War Powers Act even though we believe it's unconstitutional, as has every other administration. Every other president has found the War Powers Act to be unconstitutional; nonetheless, we notified the Gang of Eight, which was an appropriate mechanism by which to notify Congress. We sent a notification within 48 hours, the way the law requires. I'm here today to have, I don't know, my sixth or seventh briefing before the entirety of the House and Senate, which is far more than I ever got from any administration in the time that I was here, certainly when I was a member of the Gang of Eight. And so we've complied with all of it. We've over-complied with the law and what it requires. This is an action by the President to address a real threat, a real threat. This is hostilities designed to eliminate a threat to the safety and the security of the United States and to our allies.
All right?
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary —
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you said —
QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, was there a plan in place to evacuate Americans before the attack took place?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, that's the plan we're trying to carry out. The problem is, or the challenge we are facing, is airspace closures. If a country closes their airport - for example, in some cases, the airports have been hit. So the airport in Kuwait was hit. So if an airport's been attacked or the airspace is closed, then we can have the planes lined up to go but we can't get them to land because we don't have the permissions to land there. So that's the challenge.
