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Soleimani was plotting to kill ‘many more’ Americans: Trump

January 03, 2020
In this file photo taken on Dec. 24, 2019 US President Donald Trump makes a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida. — AFP
In this file photo taken on Dec. 24, 2019 US President Donald Trump makes a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida. — AFP

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said that the top Iranian commander killed in a US airstrike, Qassem Soleimani, was planning to kill Americans and was planning imminent action that threatened American citizens.

“Gen. Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more,” Trump wrote in a tweet.

The tweet went on to say, “While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country. They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!”

Pompeo too earlier said that the Iranian military commander Soleimani was planning imminent action that threatened American citizens when he was killed in a US strike.

Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arm, was killed by US forces in an air raid on Baghdad international airport.

"He was actively plotting in the region to take actions — a big action, as he described it — that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk," Pompeo told CNN.

"We know it was imminent," Pompeo said of Soleimani's plot, without going into detail about the nature of the planned operation.

"This was an intelligence-based assessment that drove our decision-making process," Pompeo added. — AFP


January 03, 2020
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