President Donald Trump elaborated more on the threat posed by Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, saying Iran was aiming to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
Soleimani was killed in a drone strike in Baghdad last week, prompting Iran to launch missiles at Iraqi military bases with American troops on the night of Jan. 7. No casualties were reported.
“I will say this, we caught a total monster. We took him out,” Trump said of Soleimani, who was the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. “That should have happened a long time ago. We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy.”
Trumps remark about Soleimanis alleged U.S. Embassy plot is the clearest comment yet from the White House about what Soleimani was intending to do in Iraq. Top Pentagon and State Department officials have revealed little about the details, which has drawn criticism from several members of Congress who have said they should have been briefed before the Soleimani drone strike.
“We also did it for other reasons that were very obvious. Somebody died, one of our military people died,” Trump told reporters, referring to the American military contractor who was killed in an attack launched by the Iran-backed terror group Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq in December.
Trump told reporters that if Soleimani were to continue unchecked, a hostage situation may have unfolded.
“Those people were going to do very serious harm,” the president said. “I believe that we wouldve had a hostage situation or we would have had worse, a lot of people killed.”
In the days leading up to the airstrike, mobs of people were trying to breach the U.S. Embassy in Iraq after the United States struck several Kataib Hezbollah targets in the country. The militia group was blRead More – Source
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