Iran building ballistic missiles posed imminent threat to our allies: US Speaker

US president Donald Trump described the joint US-Israeli campaign as having severely degraded Iran’s military capacity.

• US acted as Iran's missiles posed imminent threat to allies
• Talks with Iran on nukes and proxies were unsuccessful
• US-Israel strikes degraded Iran's military capacity

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With tensions escalating in the Middle East amid the Israel-Iran war and both sides stepping up attacks, US Speaker Mike Johnson said Washington got involved in the war as Iran was building ballistic missiles and posing an imminent threat to US's regional allies.

"We have been clear and very consistent from the beginning. It has been articulated over and over by President Donald Trump, Secretary of State, Secretary of war, myself and many others that the objective for it (Israel-Iran war) was that Iran was building ballistic missiles and they were doing it at a speed and a scale that was exceeding the capability of our regional allies to respond appropriately," said Johnson addressing reporters.

"This created an imminent and serious threat. It also gave them cover to continue with their nuclear ambitions. We tried very hard to negotiate with them about their nuclear enrichment programme. We tried to talk to them about them continuing to fund their proxies and the terrorist organisations that killed American citizens," said the US Speaker adding that the talks were not fruitful.

"The build-up of their missiles was so important and so serious that the President of United States thought that we need to act. We had a narrow and a unique opportunity to act and had that window passed, it would have been much more difficult to achieve the mission. The mission was very simple and two-fold: take out Iran's ability to launch ballistic missiles and downgrade their Navy," said Johnson adding that they have not violated the law in any way.

The US Speaker's statement comes a day after US President Donald Trump rejected claims that Israel maneuvered Washington into war with Iran, arguing instead that he believed Tehran was preparing to strike first and that the US  acted to stay ahead of the threat.

The President also described the joint US-Israeli campaign as having severely degraded Iran’s military capacity. He asserted that key elements of Iran's naval forces, air power and air defenses has been largely "obliterated."