What is the role of processing editor in a journal submission? I submitted a paper to a high impact factor journal in my field a 4 days ago. Today, I received a email from the journal editor with the following description:

Thank you for your recent submission to TTT journal. XYZ will be the processing editor for your paper referenced above.
Your submission has been been assigned the following manuscript number: ARBITRARY007.
You will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete (please allow 2-3 months for this).

So, what does this mean? Will it go to the reviewers and take 2-3 months for review? Or will it take 2-3 months for the processing editor to decide if it should be sent to reviewers for getting reviewed or be rejected?
What's the role of processing editor in this workflow?
The email clearly says that you will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete, and that the review process will take 2-3 months - so your first interpretation is correct, it will go to the reviewers who are expected to finish reviewing in 2-3 months.
Taking 2-3 months to decide to send the paper to review would be pretty extreme.