[rad-green] Soleimani was in Iraq to ease regional tensions when Trump killed him

*https://www.liberationnews.org/breaking-soleimani-was-in-iraq-to-ease-regional-tensions-then-trump-said-kill-him/
<https://www.liberationnews.org/breaking-soleimani-was-in-iraq-to-ease-regional-tensions-then-trump-said-kill-him/>Liberation
News          Jan 5, 2020*
*Soleimani was in Iraq to ease regional tensions; then Trump said ‘Kill
him’*
*Still in question is whether the Trump White House actually helped
schedule the meeting between Soleimani and Abdul-Mahdi under a pretense of
peace talks and then executed Soleimani when he arrived for it — a
mafia-style setup and assassination.*
*By Ben Becker*[image: BREAKING: Soleimani was in Iraq to ease regional
tensions; then Trump said ‘Kill him’]

Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi PM Adil Abdul-Mahdi and Donald Trump. (Photos,
left-to-right: Photo: akkasemosalman.ir via Wikimedia; Iraqi state
television; Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia)

The acting Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed Parliament today
with a recommendation for U.S. troops to be removed from the country. That
speech has been widely covered and quoted in the U.S. media but its most
explosive revelations have been omitted or buried.

In the address, Abdul-Mahdi revealed that Soleimani had traveled to Baghdad
to deliver a message back from Iran to Saudi Arabia about a proposal to
lower tensions in the region, that Soleimani was to meet with the Prime
Minister the very morning he was assassinated, and — most crucially — that
days prior Trump had asked the Iraqi Prime Minister to “play the mediator’s
role” between the U.S. and Iran.

Oddly, this information is not yet a major headline in any mainstream
publication and those that have mentioned it in passing do not explain its
full implications.

This revelation blows apart the Pentagon and White House’s claim that they
took “decisive defensive action” to preempt an attack orchestrated by
Soleimani. There can be no doubt that the Trump administration would have
known in detail about Iran’s ongoing secret negotiations with Saudi Arabia,
one of its closest allies, which were mediated by an Iraqi government,
which was also operating closely and communicating frequently with
Washington.

This means the Pentagon and the White House fully knew, when they ordered
the airstrike to kill him, that Soleimani was traveling to Baghdad in a
diplomatic capacity as an emissary of Iran, and that he had a meeting
planned with the Prime Minister to discuss broader de-escalation.
<https://www.liberationnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Screen-Shot-2020-01-06-at-1.14.54-AM.png>

PM Abdul-Mahdi meets with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May 2019.
(Photo: State Department)

The source of this revelation — Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi — was until very
recently seen as a close ally, if not proxy, of Washington. Abdul-Mahdi
says just a few days before the assassination Trump had personally called
him to thank him for helping to end the siege of the U.S. Embassy in
Baghdad. Abdul-Mahdi had denounced that protest encampment, called for it
to end and threatened to resign to convince the PMU militias to back off.

But the airstrikes against Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units
leader Abu Mahdi Al-Mohandes changed the U.S.-Iraqi dynamic instantly. The
Prime Minister called the airstrike against his guest a “political
assassination” that Iraq could not accept as an extreme violation of
national sovereignty. In an official statement, he explained that “the two
martyrs were huge symbols of the victory” over ISIS — a sentiment shared by
a wide range of Iraqi politicians and religious figures, including many who
had previously collaborated with U.S. occupation forces.

Until we receive further elaboration, the Prime Minister’s revelation to
Parliament leaves in question whether the Trump White House actually helped
schedule the meeting between Soleimani and Abdul-Mahdi under a pretense of
peace talks and then executed Soleimani when he arrived for it — a
mafia-style setup and assassination. Was the Saudi monarchy in on the plot,
despite its claims that it did not know of the airstrike beforehand, or was
Washington trying to sabotage a Saudi-Iranian peace initiative?

One anonymous Pentagon source told the New York Times that the
assassination had little forethought, and the decision left the military
“stunned”. The source claims that the Pentagon considered the drone strike
assassination of a leading Iranian official so extreme when they presented
it to Trump that they assumed he would not go for it. These reports assert
Trump ordered the hit after just 15 minutes of deliberation and suggest he
was still fuming about the images of the U.S. Embassy under siege from
Iraqis. Whether this is true — or a piece of leaked misinformation from
elements within the Pentagon now trying to walk back from total war — is
anybody’s guess.

In any case, the White House’s official Soleimani assassination story is
quickly unraveling, even faster than the “weapons of mass destruction” lie
in 2003 and the fabrications that led to the Libya bombing in 2011.

Analysts the world over believe that an all-out U.S. war with Iran, a
country with formidable defenses and 90 million people — larger than France
and Germany — would result in incalculable death and destruction, and have
enormous regional and global consequences.

A statement released today by the ANSWER Coalition, which helped initiate
the 80-city day of anti-war protest on Saturday, responded to the
revelation with renewed calls to action: “As the lies of the Trump
administration are further revealed we must continue to demand no war with
Iran and that U.S. troops leave the Middle East.”

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