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The federal government is telling Canadians to avoid all travel to the following countries: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. 

Canadians are also urged to avoid non-essential travel to Egypt, Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia. 

The latest travel advisories can be found here. 

The U.S. Department of State has called on Americans to immediately leave more than a ​dozen countries in the Middle ​East.

Due to "serious safety risks," Americans are being urged to depart using commercial tranportation ⁠from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, ‌the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, ​Qatar, Saudi Arabia, ⁠Syria, United Arab Emirates ⁠and Yemen, ⁠according ⁠to ​Mora Namdar, the State Department's ​assistant ⁠secretary for consular affairs. 

If the strike on an all-girls school that killed more than 150 people came from the U.S., the Department of War will investigate, Rubio said.

"We would like to know," Rubio said. "The United States would not deliberately target a school."

It would be a "tragic outcome" if it was a U.S. Strike, he added.

Social media video shows billowing cloud of black smoke rising over Tehran

A social media video released Monday shows giant plumes of smoke rising in Tehran as strikes from Israel and the U.S. Continued. Reuters, which verified the images by comparing scenes against satellite imagery, says a speaker in the video is heard saying 'it's the eleventh,' which could refer to the date on the Iranian calendar, which corresponds to March 2.

Several explosions in Tehran were captured from a distance in this social media video, which shows thick clouds of black smoke billowing over the city.  

The ‌Israeli ​military issued an ​evacuation ⁠warning ⁠to ‌some residents of Tehran late Monday, especially ⁠those living in the Evin neighbourhood, near ‌the headquarters of ​Iran's ⁠state broadcaster, ⁠IRIB. 

The IDF said that it would be carrying out military action in the designated area within the next few hours and warned citizens to get out immediately. 

"Please evacuate the indicated region for your health and safety. Your presence in the region endangers your life," it said. 

Rubio was again asked about why they didn't notify Congress before launching strikes.

He responded that they notified "Congressional leadership" beforehand, but added the law says they have to notify Congress 48 hours after beginning hostilities. 

"We did notify members of Congress in advance, but we cannot notify 535 members."

Plus, he added, "there's no law that requires the president to have done anything with regards to this."

"We complied with the law 100 per cent."

When asked about whether the U.S. Has a plan on how to fill the power vacuum left by the death of the nation's supreme leader, Rubio reiterated that their goal was to destroy Iran's short-range ballistic missile capability and eliminate the threat posed by its navy.

"We hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government," Rubio said. "We would love for that to be possible."

When asked directly if the U.S. Will play any role in helping Iran with its government, Rubio shrugged and said, "we might."

When a reporter asked if Congress needed to weigh in, or if lawmakers were warned there was a threat, Rubio deflected.

"There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us."

"And we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded."

The U.S. Responded "proactively" and in a defensive way to prevent Iran from inflicting more damage than they did, Rubio said. And if they hadn't done so, he claimed, "there would be hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn't act preemptively to prevent more casualties."

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington that he doesn't understand "what the confusion is" over the goals of U.S. Attacks in Iran.

The U.S. Is conducting an operation in Iran to eliminate the threat of Iran's short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by its navy, he told reporters.

"That is what it's focused on right now and it's doing it quite successfully."

As for the question of why now, Rubio said it was "abundantly clear" that if Iran came under attack by anyone, including Israel, they were going to respond by attacking the U.S. And that if the U.S. Waited for that attack to come first, "before we hit them," they would suffer much higher casualty numbers.

"So the president made the very wise decision" to attack first, Rubio said.

"It was the right decision and an important decision for the safety and security of the world."

Former U.S. Intelligence officer Michael Pregent, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, says the war in Iran is not going to be like those two conflicts.

He says the U.S. Has offered immunity to Revolutionary Guard members who lay down their arms. 

Pregent says regime change in Iran, if it comes, won't have "an American face on it" — that it needs to come from the civilian population. 

"We won't repeat the same mistakes. We may still fail, but won't repeat the same mistakes."

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