Trump Administration’s Shifting Statements on Soleimani’s Death
Since announcing on Jan. 2 that a U.S. operation had killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration has offered various accounts of the intelligence assessments that President Donald Trump relied on to make his decision.
Initially, Trump administration officials said Soleimani was planning an “imminent attack” against U.S. service members and diplomats without providing any evidence or offering any details. “We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where — but it was real,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Jan. 9 interview.
Over the course of two days, Jan. 9 and Jan. 10, the president escalated the imminent threats posed by Soleimani with new details — but no evidence — that even members of Congress were not given in their classified briefings.
On Jan. 9, Trump told reporters Soleimani was threatening to “blow up” the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and later told his supporters at a political rally that Soleimani “was looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in Baghdad.” A day later, Trump told Fox News, “I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies.”
But, in the Fox News interview, Trump hedged his revelations with the words “I believe” and “I think.” He went on in that
