In his first remarks on the US killing of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani 24 hours earlier, President Donald Trump today asserted the action was intended to avert a war, not start one. But Trump, like others in his administration, provided scant details to back up their claim that the United States had acted to disrupt an imminent attack on US facilities and diplomatic personnel in the region that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force chief was allegedly planning when he was killed in a precision US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport along with an Iraqi militia leader.
“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” Trump said in scripted remarks at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, before taking no questions.
