Secretary of State Mark Rubio told reporters a short time ago that he was expecting Iran's response to U.S. peace proposal at any moment.

The Trump administration has offered to Iran a 15-point plan to end the war, and this comes as the two sides could potentially begin face-to-face negotiations in the near future.

At the same time, the U.S. is sending thousands of troops to the Middle East, though

Secretary Rubio says that Iranian military capabilities can be destroyed without putting

any American troops on the ground. Listen.

We can achieve, we are achieving all those objectives. We are ahead of schedule on most

of them, and we can achieve them without any ground troops. Without any.

Now, in terms of why there's deployments, number one, the president has to be prepared for

multiple contingencies, which I'm not going to discuss in the new year.

And again, I refer you to the Department of War, who will probably tell you the exact same thing.

But we can achieve all of our objectives with our ground troops, but we are

always going to be prepared to give the president maximum optionality and maximum opportunity

to adjust to contingencies should they emerge.

So we don't have the exact number of servicemen or women who were actually injured during

this attack, but I was just told by a source moments ago that two of the service members did have shrapnel wounds, but they were clear to say that these were non-life-threatening wounds. I'm also told that aircrafts, at least one aircraft, was damaged in this strike, but it's not something that's going to totally take out their capabilities on that air base. Now, in terms of the shrapnel wounds, in terms of the wounds overall, the injuries overall, we do not have clarity on how many service members, men and women, were actually injured.

We do not have clarity on what those injuries were other than the at least two service men and women who are injured with a shrapnel injury.

Now, of course, all of this is going to further complicate what is supposed to be happening behind the scenes right now and what we are told is

happening, which is this quest for diplomacy, these ongoing negotiations. And I will say, we heard from

the Secretary of State earlier today who said that they were waiting to hear from Iran on that

15-point plan and that they still didn't know who they were supposed to be talking to and what they were

supposed to be talking about. And the reason why that's so critical, that 15 point plan, I mean,

that's supposed to be the basis of these negotiations. So if Iran doesn't accept that,

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