As the U.S. war with Iran continues to spiral, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. State Department is working to organize charter flights and military options to help Americans depart the Middle East.
Watch Rubio’s remarks in the video player above.
Speaking to reporters after briefing senators on the war plans, Rubio said there are about 1,500 Americans who are requesting assistance to get out of the Middle East and about 9,000 have been able to leave since the start of the war.
WATCH: As Iran expands retaliatory attacks, U.S. urges Americans to leave Middle East
“We have identified and continue 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 the combination of those three things,” Rubio said.
Rubio also asked the press to broadcast the State Department’s numbers for Americans evacuating the region.
“We know that we’re going to be able to help them,” Rubio said about the estimated 1,500 Americans in the affected areas.
“It’s going to take a little time because we don’t control the airspace closures,” he said. “That said, there may be more people out there that need help. We need to know who you are.”
The State Department offers information at https://www.state.gov which directs people to enroll at https://step.state.gov to receive the latest security updates. It also said Americans who need consular assistance can call 24/7 +1-202-501-4444 (from abroad) and +1-888-407-4747 (from the U.S. and Canada).
Rubio also addressed the drone strike near the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, saying that “all personnel are accounted for.”
He said a drone struck a parking log adjacent to the chancellery building and then set off a fire, but most personnel had already left.
“So we’ve been very fortunate, obviously, but our embassies and our diplomatic facilities are under direct attack from a terroristic regime,” Rubio said.
The Secretary of State also issued a warning to Iran: “We’re going to unleash Chiang on these people in the next few hours and days,” he said.
“You’re going 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,” Rubio added.
‘We were not going to get hit first’
Rubio insisted that Trump made the decision to attack Iran because this past weekend presented what he called a unique opportunity for the mission to be successful.
“The president is determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple,” Rubio said ahead of a closed-door briefing for lawmakers.
Rubio was revisiting his remarks from a day earlier that have run into fierce blowback. At the time, he had said Trump believed Israel was determined to act and wanted the U.S. to go first with a preemptive strike on Iran to prevent any retaliation on American bases and operations in the region.
READ MORE: Netanyahu risks American support for Israel with war against Iran
“We are not going to put American troops in harm’s way,” he said.
Amid the administration’s shifting reasons for the war with Iran, Rubio also returned to Trump’s initial rationale. “There is no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch,” he said.
“The world will be a safer place when these radical clerics no longer have access to these weapons,” Rubio said.
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