National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien on Sunday said there was “exquisite intelligence” showing that Iran wanted to kill American soldiers.
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” O’Brien defended President Donald Trump’s view of an “imminent threat” as a reason to order the deadly strike on Iran’s top general, Qessam Soleimani.
“We were very concerned about the situation,” he said. “We had exquisite intelligence and the intelligence showed that they were looking at U.S. facilities throughout the region and that they wanted to inflict casualties on American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, as well as diplomats. “
“The threat was imminent. I saw the intelligence…. the President’s interpretation of that intelligence is very consistent with it. And so I think this has been a – this has been a Washington thing,” he said about arguments over whether four embassies were being targeted, and how imminent the threat was.
But O’Brien deferred going into details about the imminence of any attack, assuring Trump should be credited for the mission.
“I think imminent generally means soon, quickly, in process, so I think those threats were imminent and I don’t want to get into the definition further than that,” he said. “But we took the measures necessary to protect American diplomats and our soldiers, sailors and our marines. And I think what you see, because of the prompt action that we took, both with respect to the embassy in Baghdad, which they would have attempted to over run in storm, and with the respect to our military bases that were hit by the Iranians with our ballistic missiles, there was no loss of American life in either case, and I think that is a credit to the President of the United States.”
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.