[rad-green] Seems Increasingly Likely Trump Just Made Up the 'Imminent Threat' Posed by Soleimani

*https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/13/seems-increasingly-likely-trump-just-made-imminent-threat-posed-soleimani
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/13/seems-increasingly-likely-trump-just-made-imminent-threat-posed-soleimani>Common
Dreams          January 13, 2020Seems Increasingly Likely Trump Just Made
Up the 'Imminent Threat' Posed by Soleimani*


*New reporting reveals the president conditionally approved the Iranian
general's assassination seven months ago.by Andrea Germanos, staff writer*

[image: President Donald Trump address to the nation from the Grand Foyer
at the White House on Wednesday, January 8, 2020 in Washington, D.C.]

*President Donald Trump address to the nation from the Grand Foyer at the
White House on Wednesday, January 8, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Jabin
Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)*

New reporting out Monday further erodes the White House narrative that
President Donald Trump was justified in ordering the assassination of
Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani earlier this month because Soleimani posed an
"imminent" threat to American targets.

According to
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-authorized-soleimani-s-killing-7-months-ago-conditions-n1113271>
 *NBC News, *Trump authorized Soleimani's killing in June—seven months
ago—on the condition that Iranian actions resulted in the death of an
American. The assassination was pushed by Iran war hawks John Bolton and
Mike Pompeo, who wanted the U.S. to carry out the killing in retaliation
for Iran shooting down
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/13/news/2019/06/20/accusing-us-intrusion-national-airspace-iran-shoots-down-american-spy-drone>
a
US. drone in June. Trump responded to the push by responding "that's only
on the table if they hit Americans," according to a person briefed on the
discussion.

Discussions on targeting Soleimani began even earlier. From *NBC*:

The idea of killing Soleimani came up in discussions in 2017 that Trump's
national security adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster,
was having with other administration officials about the president's
broader national security strategy, officials said. But it was just one of
a host of possible elements of Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against
Iran and "was not something that was thought of as a first move," said a
former senior administration official involved in the discussions.

Middle East analyst Juan Cole added to the mounting scrutiny over Trump's
"imminent" threat narrative on Monday. Writing at his *Informed Comment* blog,
Cole noted
<https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/scandal-imminent-soleimani.html>:

[Soleimani] does not appear to have killed or had killed any Americans at
all in the past decade, and from 2015 because of the U.N. Security Council
nuclear deal with Iran, Soleimani was not an adversary of the US in recent
years. In fact, he was often a de facto ally and the U.S. Air Force gave
him air support at Tikrit and elsewhere
<https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/soleimani-against-support.html> in the
campaign against ISIL (ISIS, Daesh). In fact, for a while there Soleimani
was fighting ISIL and al-Qaeda-linked militias in Syria in tacit alliance
with the Kurds supported by the United States at a time when Israel allied
with an al-Qaeda affiliate
<https://www.juancole.com/2015/09/years-israel-tempted.html> in the Golan
Heights.

Moreover, the entire narrative of the Trump administration was undermined
by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdelmahdi, who told Parliament on Jan. 5
<https://www.nasnews.com/%D9%86%D8%B5-%D9%83%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%8A-%D8%A3%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%84%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%86-%D9%83%D9%86%D8%AA-%D8%A3%D9%86/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=4b9c0e552cce60b75d2deee3afd21e37a6f7e839-1578896268-0-AX3-PE6o5pGbMespYRcRBlfCVfWRHlQaUpLdUiH_Qzavf-eUVS463eEMOmeKi5Zvr87oKeMNBKfNKGwjorQRKk9nrii5csCW2manUmVyEBizq-6uLUyW_iYfjThQB2A1DJQEwMWDtr-qEGsFwq3Nd412DzH9TYY1rTvIIotfHJ7Ivs6bnJ8YhuUfHM2a3KdBem0X_Mos-GGT4Cztmd7w1ONv1Mi7XHALk8aHxFSzbJ1dBPAgN3uOF_riXH9hgeMDJ2S3yqNC1d0J-EzDz5syXXhTBs2gmHK8dzjSME-ypr9cm6fse8P99_7YWkJFSQG-PkTQDvq3U62wuuQqS6N0OvDMt2BJ3BbcNwf-BGZAYgSJeZAKPBaPEzNmkDZm7Bc2KX6QAzKGPQzlUnNJGlbsAyrG1tCtvYC6SnFZtD22o4yW7Wa5snDLP1RR6e-lep3WgFqHoPcBGIRL11elHucgckTBjDbA-L6uwcZjv6LpockkCdILEbPVfSAfRVjRncvH8qzpbE35RjD0fDZSMB-AENaJ8x9Gw553QYKLcW9zvMFr7ZfBiKsaYPkzoysCp79HVbjWGr4hS5UMDsm_9N9Kn6s>
when
he asked its members to kick out the U.S. military, that he had personally
invited Soleimani to Baghdad as part of a back-channel set of negotiations
between Saudi Arabia and Iran aimed at cooling down tensions between the
two. Soleimani did not sneak into Iraq on a covert mission. He flew on a
commercial jet and went through passport control with his diplomatic
passport.

While an attempt was made to invade the U.S. embassy on the Wednesday
before Soleimani's arrival, that was done by members of the Iraqi militia,
the Kata'ib Hizbullah, who were angry that on December 30, the Trump
administration bombed its bases in northern Iraq and killed some two dozen
of its fighters.

Cole suggested the Trump administration appeared to be taking a page from
the George W. Bush administration, which set up the Office of Special Plans
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jul/17/iraq.usa> to amass sketchy
evidence to push the narrative of a threat of weapons of mass destruction
posed by Iraq.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have also found
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/08/strike-choice-us-lawmakers-decry-utterly-unconvincing-trump-briefing-soleimani>
evidence
presented to them by administration officials to be unconvincing.

Among that group is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.),  who pointed to Defense
Secretary Mark Esper's comments to *CBS* Sunday that he "didn't see" any
specific evidence about four U.S. embassies being targeted by Soleimani.

Speaking on *MSNBC*'s Kasie DC show Sunday, Merkley said, "the whole
imminent argument is basically made up and they're trying to backfill and
give that some substance."

"But it wasn't there," Merkley said. "It wasn't in the [Senate] brieifing.
It wasn't detailed... and there's Secretary Esper trying to square the
circle and having a hard time doing it."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also contributed to the doubt over the
administration's stated justification, telling
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/pompeo-says-no-doubt-soleimani-was-planning-imminent-attacks-admits-he-doesnt-know>
 *Fox News* last week that the administration actually didn't know when or
where the purported "imminent" attacks were going to take place.

Soleimani's killing has sparked Agnes Callamard, United Nations special
rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, to call
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/07/special-rapporteur-extrajudicial-executions-demands-official-un-probe-soleimani>
this
month for an impartial probe.

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