War of words grows louder over Iran
Trump, ayatollah exchange threats following U.S. drone strike that killed top military leader
WASHINGTON — The United States and Iran exchanged escalating military threats on Friday as President Donald Trump warned that he was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary” if Iran threatened Americans and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed to exact vengeance for the killing on Trump’s order of Iran’s most valued general.
Although the president insisted that he took the action to avoid a war with Iran, the continuing threats further rattled foreign capitals, global markets and Capitol Hill, where Democrats demanded more information about the strike and Trump’s grounds for taking such a provocative move without consulting Congress.
But Trump, speaking to reporters in a hastily arranged appearance at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, asserted that Maj. Gen. Qassem
Soleimani, who directed Iranian paramilitary forces throughout the Middle East, “was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him.”
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed Trump’s remarks, as did Robert O’Brien, the national
security adviser. But Milley, Pompeo, O’Brien and other senior administration officials did not describe any new specific threats that were different from what American officials say Soleimani had been orchestrating for years.
Democrats questioned the lack of specifics about any new threat that would justify Trump’s order to kill Soleimani, which both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had rejected as too risky.
“What always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, said in a statement. “The two administrations I worked for both determined that the ultimate ends didn’t justify the means.”
In Baghdad, the State Department urged U.S. citizens to leave Iraq immediately, citing “heightened tensions.” The U.S. Embassy, which had been under siege by pro-Iranian protesters chanting “Death to America” in recent days, suspended consular operations.
Iraq’s parliament is set to meet on Saturday and could consider a measure to expel all American forces from the country for the first time since 2003.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., some 3,500 members of the 82nd Airborne, ordered to the Middle East this week, prepared to deploy to Kuwait.
On Wall Street, the stock market fell as oil prices jumped after the news of the general’s death: The price of Brent oil, the international benchmark, surged in the early hours of Hong Kong trading to nearly $70 a barrel — an increase of $3.
Trump said that the killing early Friday of Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was long overdue, though he insisted he did not want a larger fight with Iran.
“We took action last night to stop a war,” the president said. “We did not take action to start a war.” But moments later, he warned Iran that the American military had “already fully identified” potential targets for further attacks “if Americans anywhere are threatened.”
By early evening, as he came under growing criticism for what his critics called a reckless national security gamble, Trump said he wanted to contain the conflict.
“We do not seek war, we do not seek nation-building, we do not seek regime change,” Trump told a gathering of his evangelical supporters in Miami, seeming to draw a contrast with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Hours earlier, Khamenei had warned Trump that there would be consequences for Soleimani’s death, who died after an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles at his convoy as it was leaving Baghdad International Airport.
“His departure to God does not end his path or his mission,” Khamenei said in a statement, “but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands.”
Writing on Twitter earlier in the day, Trump suggested that Soleimani “got caught” preparing to hit American targets.
“General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more...but got caught!” Trump tweeted. “He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people, including the recent large number of PROTESTERS killed in Iran itself.”
Almost 24 hours after the attack on Soleimani, Iraqi officials and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq reported another deadly airstrike.
An Iraqi government official reported a strike on two vehicles north of Baghdad but had no information on casualties. Another security official who witnessed the aftermath described charred vehicles and said five people were killed. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Iraqi state television and the media arm of the Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces also reported the strike. The group said its medics were targeted.
An American official who spoke on the condition on anonymity denied the U.S. was behind the reported attack.
The White House approved the strike on Soleimani after a rocket attack last week on an Iraqi military base outside Kirkuk killed an American civilian contractor and injured other American and Iraqi personnel, according to a U.S. official who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal decision making. The Joint Special Operations Command spent the next several days looking for an opportunity.
The option that was eventually approved depended on Soleimani’s arrival on Thursday at Baghdad
International Airport. If he was met by Iraqi officials, the U.S. official said, the strike would be called off. But the official said it turned out to be a “clean party,” and the strike was approved.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said that a classified briefing was being arranged for all senators next week and that everyone should welcome the demise of Soleimani. “For too long, this evil man operated without constraint and countless innocents have suffered for it,” McConnell said on the floor. “Now his terrorist leadership has been ended.”
Democrats said Trump’s move could further involve the United States in Middle East conflict rather than pull out as he has promised. “President Trump came into office saying he wanted to end America’s wars in the Middle East, but today we are closer to war with Iran than ever before and the Administration’s reckless policy over the last 3 years has brought us to the brink,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland wrote on Twitter.
Soleimani, the driving force behind Iranian-sponsored attacks and operations over two decades around the region including Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, was considered perhaps the secondmost powerful figure in Iran, after Khamenei.
Pompeo dismissed concerns raised by U.S. allies, who expressed fear of a wider war in the Middle East. A French minister suggested that “we are waking up in a more dangerous world” following the strike.
“Yeah, well, the French are just wrong about that,” Pompeo said. “The world is a much safer place today. And I can assure you Americans in the region are much safer today after the demise of Qassem Soleimani.”
Presidents Emmanuel Macron of France and Vladimir Putin of Russia spoke by telephone and agreed to try to “prevent a new and dangerous escalation of tensions,” according to a summary issued by Macron’s office. The French president also stressed the fight against the Islamic State should be a priority, as well as efforts to get Iran to return to compliance on the 2015 nuclear agreement, from which Trump withdrew but Russia, China and three European nations still support.
The decision to hit Soleimani complicates relations with Iraq’s government, which has tried to balance itself between the United States and Iran.
A senior Iraqi official said Friday that there was a good chance the Iraqi parliament would vote to force U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Top Iraqi leaders earlier had wanted to accommodate the troop presence because of the persistent threat from the Islamic State and other regional security matters.
On Friday afternoon, the State Department announced it was designating a prominent Iraqi militia supported by Iran as a foreign terrorist organization, in what appeared to be a policy extension of the strike on Soleimani. The move paved the way for harder U.S. actions against the militia, Aas’ib Ahl al-Haq. The State Department also designated the leaders of the militia, brothers Qais al-Khazali and Laith al-Khazali, as global terrorists. The group received training and financing from the Quds Force, the elite unit led by Soleimani, the department said.