Trump has considered killing Iran’s Soleimani since last summer, sources say
Last summer, as Iranian forces shot down an American drone, taunted oil tankers in the Gulf and threatened U.S. personnel in Iraq, President Donald Trump was presented with a series of options to respond.
It was at this time that administration officials first began considering killing Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, according to three sources familiar with the deliberations.
The consequences of Soleimani’s targeted killing on Thursday night from a U.S. drone strike on his car near the Baghdad airport remain precarious. But Middle East diplomats, defense officials and presidential advisers said the potential fallout was discussed and considered within the administration over an extended period.
One defense official said that Soleimani, who led the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was a person of interest for months, as it became clearer he was behind the escalating attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities. One diplomat with a U.S. ally in the region said that Soleimani was discussed as a U.S. target since the summer.
“Soleimani has been under consideration as a target for many years – the question is when it reached the president’s desk,” said one source who frequently consults with the National Security Council. “My understanding is that it was made many months ago.”
Despite bipartisan praise for the elimination of Soleimani, Trump is facing increased criticism in Washington that the aftermath of the assassination could escalate out of control – and that he authorized the strike without a clear plan. Trump approved the deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops to the region on Friday.
“What this administration has done from Day One is ratchet up pressure on Iran without a larger strategy,” Sen. Chris Van Val Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told McClatchy. “They can’t tell you today what their real endgame is. So that has brought us to the brink of war.”
“The question is, why did the administration choose this moment, why this administration made the decision to remove [Soleimani] from the battlefield when other administrations of both parties decided that would escalate the risks, not decrease them,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who received a briefing on the attacks on Friday, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I have yet to get an adequate answer to that question.”
A defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Soleimani was responsible for the roadside bombs that caused the deaths of at least 400 American service members in Iraq and Syria during military operations there, and the wounding of 2,000 more.
But Soleimani was also considered the chief architect of Iran’s regional strategy, directing IRGC forces to build a land bridge from its Western border to the Mediterranean Sea through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
That effort has alarmed U.S. officials for years, and has united Israel and Gulf Arab states in a quiet alliance intended to push back against Iranian influence regionwide.
Trump’s withdrawal from an international nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 reinstated a series of sanctions that have squeezed its government. Since then, the IRGC’s offensive operations in the region have grown more overt.
Yet Trump had not shown any appetite for conflict – up until Thursday.
In June, Trump ordered U.S. warplanes to stand down with minutes to spare from a strike on Iran itself, in response to its downing of a U.S. drone. In September, a sophisticated Iranian attack on a critical Saudi oil facility in Abqaiq went without a response.
One State Department official said that the message of Trump’s action should be clear: The days in which Iran can act without consequence are over.
“The president’s direction came because of the recent threats we’ve experienced in Iraq, in particular in the last couple of months,” a senior defense official said. “Soleimani arrived at a target of opportunity. He arrived at the airport and we had an opportunity, and based on the president’s direction we took it.”
But questions remain over the timing of the strike on Soleimani, given the sustained threat level he posed to U.S. troops in the region over more than a decade.
Former President George W. Bush considered a strike on Soleimani throughout his term, but refrained out of concern over blowback.
“He was No. 1 on my list 12 years ago,” retired U.S. Navy Admiral William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command during the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007, told McClatchy. “They were working overtime and he got too big for his britches – too visible.”
“But I don’t know what the policy is, what the plan is,” Fallon said. “It would be nice if we had a plan.”
There are about 5,200 U.S. forces still in Iraq, located at training sites throughout the country, and a detachment of Marines and soldiers at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. There are also still hundreds of U.S. soldiers in northeast Syria, protecting that oil-rich region from being seized by remaining ISIS fighters.
In late October, Army National Guard’s 30th Armored Brigade units from North Carolina and South Carolina deployed near Deir ez-Zor, Syria.
On Friday, the Pentagon confirmed that it would also send approximately 3,000 additional forces from Fort Bragg, N.C.,-based 82nd Airborne Division to bolster security in the region.
That is on top of the 700 members of the 82nd who were deployed earlier this week in response to attacks on the U.S. embassy in the Iraqi capital, when Iran-aligned groups breached the facility’s green zone to protest recent U.S. strikes in the country.
Two U.S. diplomats said that embassy staff stationed in Beirut and Baghdad are especially fearful over the consequences of Soleimani’s killing, while other U.S. embassies around the Gulf region remain on alert.
“We’re certainly aware of the potential of an Iranian response and we are well postured to defend U.S. forces,” a second defense official said in reaction to Thursday’s strike.
But some fear Iran’s response to Soleimani’s killing might also take a strategic form.
French and British diplomats publicly supported Trump’s action, but privately expressed concern that Tehran will use Soleimani’s death as an excuse to exit the 2015 nuclear agreement once and for all, expanding its enrichment of uranium.
“The goal is still clearly de-escalation,” a French diplomat told McClatchy, “and avoiding a nuclear crisis.”
Emma Dumain contributed to this report.
This story was originally published January 3, 2020 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Trump has considered killing Iran’s Soleimani since last summer, sources say."
