How Trump made the decision to kill Suleimani
By David S. CloudStaff
Writer
LA Times, Jan. 4, 2020
WASHINGTON —
When
President Trump’s national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in
Florida on Monday, they weren’t expecting him to approve an operation to kill Gen. Qassem
Suleimani.
Secretary
of State Michael R. Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach to brief Trump on
airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against
Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia groups.
One
briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the U.S. could
take, among them targeting Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, according to a senior U.S. official familiar
with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the
record.
Unexpectedly,
Trump chose that option, the official said, adding that the president’s
decision was spurred on in part by Iran hawks among his advisors.
That
meant the Pentagon suddenly faced the daunting task of carrying out Trump’s
orders.
An
Iranian general was killed in Iraq. Why did Trump want him dead?
The
first hint that further U.S. action was possible came only minutes after the
end of the meeting with Trump.
“In
our discussion today with the president, we discussed with him other options
that are available,” Esper told reporters. “And I would note also that we will
take additional actions as necessary.”
Suleimani
wasn’t mentioned publicly as a possible target. But behind the scenes, Trump’s
decision set off a furious effort by the Pentagon, CIA and others to locate the
Iranian general and put in place military assets to kill him.
U.S.
intelligence agencies, which had been tracking Suleimani for years, knew he was
on an extended Middle East trip that had taken him to Lebanon and Syria. He
would be flying from Damascus to Baghdad within days, they learned.
He
seemed unusually unconcerned about covering his tracks, officials noted. He was
traveling from Syria to Baghdad on a flight that was not secret, Iranian
officials said Friday, ostensibly for meetings with Iraqi officials.
But
U.S. officials claimed Friday that Suleimani’s trip had a more nefarious
purpose: He was in the final stages of planning major attacks against U.S.
facilities in several Middle East countries, they said.
Iran
has vowed “harsh retaliation” as tensions soar after a U.S. airstrike near
Baghdad’s airport that killed a top Iranian general.
“He
was personally going to a few locations for final planning authority for what
we assessed to be something big,” said the officials, who briefed reporters
under ground rules that didn’t allow them to be identified. The specific
targets were unclear and officials declined to describe the evidence that
backed up their assessment.
He
had already been linked to a Dec. 27 rocket attack that killed an America
military contractor near Kirkuk, Iraq. In the days before Suleimani arrived in
Baghdad, U.S. officials blamed him for orchestrating violent protests at the
U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.
A
senior State Department official said new intelligence indicated Suleimani was
plotting attacks on American diplomats, military personnel and facilities that
house Americans in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
“There
was consensus in the president’s national security cabinet that the risk of
doing nothing was unacceptable given the intelligence and given the
effectiveness that Suleimani presents,” the official said.
When
Suleimani arrived in Baghdad on Thursday, a U.S drone and other military
aircraft were circling near Baghdad International Airport. Sulaimani and
several members of a pro-Iranian military got into two vehicles and were riding
on the airport road toward downtown Baghdad when missiles fired from the drone
struck.
Both
vehicles were engulfed in flames.
According
to Iraqi officials, rescuers identified Suleimani’s body among the casualties
by the blood-red ring he always wore that was still attached to his ash-covered
left hand.
Times
staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report.
David
S. Cloud covers the Pentagon and the military from the Washington, D.C., bureau
of the Los Angeles Times. In his 30-year career, he has also worked at the New
York Times and the Wall Street Journal, where he was a member of a team of
reporters awarded a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Sept 11, 2001,
terror attacks. He is co-author of “The Fourth Star,” which traces the careers
and experiences in Iraq of four U.S. officers.
How Trump decided to kill a top
Iranian general
By Missy Ryan
,
Dan Lamothe
and
Reporter
covering the Pentagon and the U.S. military
National
security reporter focusing on the State Department and diplomacy.
January 3 at
8:16 PM
On Sunday, President Trump’s most senior national
security advisers joined him at his Mar-a-
Lago resort in Florida, where Trump was beginning the second week of his holiday vacation. The officials told reporters that U.S. F-15 Strike Eagles had just attacked Iranian-sponsored militia groups at their bases in Iraq and Syria, in response to a series of rocket attacks that had culminated in the death of an American contractor two days earlier.
Lago resort in Florida, where Trump was beginning the second week of his holiday vacation. The officials told reporters that U.S. F-15 Strike Eagles had just attacked Iranian-sponsored militia groups at their bases in Iraq and Syria, in response to a series of rocket attacks that had culminated in the death of an American contractor two days earlier.
But privately, a different topic had come up with an agitated president:
whether to kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, whom military leaders
described as responsible for the attack on an American citizen and likely to
kill more.
Why Trump chose this moment to explore an operation against the leader of
Iran’s Quds Force, after tolerating Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf for
months, was a matter of debate within his own administration. Officials gave
differing and incomplete accounts of the intelligence they said prompted Trump
to act. Some said they were stunned by his decision, which could lead to war
with one of America’s oldest adversaries in the Middle East.
“It was tremendously bold and even surprised many of us,” said a senior
administration official with knowledge of high-level discussions among Trump
and his advisers, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss internal deliberations.
On Friday, hours after a U.S. drone killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader
at the Baghdad airport, senior State Department officials told reporters that
Iran had been plotting “imminent attacks directed at killing hundreds of
Americans” but declined to offer specifics. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told
CNN on Friday that Soleimani “was actively plotting in the region to take actions,
the big action as he described it, that would have put dozens if not hundreds
of American lives at risk. We know it was imminent.”
How the U.S.-Iranian confrontation heated up in one week
On Capitol Hill, officials briefed lawmakers and staff
but didn’t provide any details about the alleged Iranian targets or what made
them imminent, according to people who were present.
Some analysts were skeptical about the need to kill Soleimani.
“There may well have been an ongoing plot as Pompeo claims, but Soleimani
was a decision-maker, not an operational asset himself,” said Jon Bateman, who
served as a senior intelligence analyst on Iran at the Defense Intelligence
Agency. “Killing him would be neither necessary nor sufficient to disrupt the
operational progression of an imminent plot. What it might do instead is shock
Iran’s decision calculus” and deter future attack plans, Bateman said.
In a conference call with reporters, national security adviser Robert C.
O’Brien said Friday evening that the strike on Soleimani happened after he
recently visited Damascus and was plotting to target U.S. military and
diplomatic personnel.
“This strike was aimed at disrupting ongoing attacks that were being
planned by Soleimani and deterring future Iranian attacks through their proxies
or through the . . . Quds Force directly against Americans,” O’Brien said.
Defense officials described Soleimani’s planning as part
of a continuation of earlier Iranian provocations, including the mining of
ships in the Persian Gulf in May. A month later, Trump called off an airstrike at practically the last
minute — an attack that had been intended to retaliate for Iran downing a U.S.
surveillance drone.
Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said
in a meeting with reporters on Friday that Soleimani was killed after U.S.
officials recently became aware of intelligence that showed that the “size,
scale, scope” of what he was planning led them to conclude there was a greater
risk in not taking action than in doing so.
“Is there risk? Damn right there’s risk,” Milley said of possible Iranian
reactions to the killing one of the nation’s most prominent leaders. “But we’re
mitigating, and we think we’re taking appropriate mitigations.”
“The ball is in the Iranian court,” Milley said. “It is their choice what
the next steps are.”
It may be days or weeks before U.S. officials know how Iran will respond.
But the rapid sequence of events that led to Soleimani’s death made clear that
a decades-old conflict has reached a fever pitch.
An
American casualty
The immediate roots of the current crisis can be traced to the Friday after
Christmas, when a barrage of missile fire exploded at K-1, a joint U.S.-Iraqi
base on the southern edge of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Of about
30 rockets that American officials said were fired at the air base several
hours after sundown, nine landed within the sprawling facility.
American officials quickly blamed Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful militia group they
say receives funding and arms from Iran. In addition to wounding three U.S.
soldiers and two Iraqi federal police, officials said the attack killed an
American interpreter, whose identity has not been made public. That person had
been working alongside a force of about 100 U.S. personnel on the base as part
of the campaign against the Islamic State.
While the attack evoked the frequent rocket fire that
rained down on U.S. troops in Baghdad and other locations in the years
following the 2003 invasion, such incidents have been uncommon in recent years.
The United States has found itself in the odd position of fighting on the same
side as Iranian-backed militias against the Islamic State. But the rocket
attacks resumed in recent months as the Trump administration has continued its
“maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions against Iran, growing in
intensity until the Kirkuk attack.
“Thirty-one rockets aren’t designed as a warning shot. That’s designed to
inflict damage and kill,” Milley told reporters before the Soleimani strike.
U.S. officials were disappointed Iraq had not publicly condemned the Kirkuk
attack and questioned the government’s willingness to check militias loyal to
their powerful neighbor.
Almost exactly 48 hours after the Kirkuk attack, American F-15 jets
unleashed bombs on five militia sites. The targets included command nodes and
weapons depots in Bu Kamal, Syria, and al-Qaim, Iraq, border outposts on either
side of the Iraq-Syria border. Speaking later that day after meeting with Trump
at Mar-a-Lago, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said the attack was successful
but also hinted at discussion of “other options” being considered.
“We will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our
own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior,” he said.
The strikes created an immediate political crisis in Baghdad, where
officials were given little notice of the plans by their chief Western ally to
attack militias linked to their powerful neighbor.
The backlash was particularly fierce from militia leaders.
“The response will be harsh for the American forces in Iraq,” warned Jamal
Jaafar Ibrahimi, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces, better known
as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. (Also the founder of the Kataib Hezbollah militia,
al-Muhandis was killed in the U.S. strike on Soleimani.)
Two days later, on Tuesday, thousands of militia supporters converged on the U.S.
Embassy in Baghdad, throwing molotov cocktails and breaching the
secure compound’s walls before setting up a protest camp outside. As militiamen
set fire to a reception area, smoke billowed out of the facility that had once
symbolized U.S. influence and might in Iraq. Inside the compound, staff
hunkered down in safe rooms. Military leaders immediately dispatched about 100
Marines to Baghdad, then sent another 750 troops to remain on standby in
Kuwait.
Tensions appeared to subside the following day, when militia leaders issued
instructions for the demonstrators to depart and the government appealed for
calm. American officials, however, were exasperated that Iraqi leaders had
responded slowly and government security forces stood by while the militiamen
laid siege to the embassy.
Trump
decides to act
At his resort in Florida, the president was told the Iranian leader was
going to be coming to Baghdad; senior officials felt he was taunting the United
States by showing up in the Iraqi capital, implying he could move around with
impunity.
Calls between the national security principals were convened by the vice
president throughout the week after initial discussions on Sunday to kill
Soleimani, a senior administration official said.
Officials reminded Trump that after the Iranians mined ships, downed the U.S.
drone and allegedly attacked a Saudi oil facility, he hadn’t responded. Acting
now, they said, would send a message: “The argument is, if you don’t ever
respond to them, they think they can get by with anything,” one White House
official said.
Trump was also motivated to act by what he felt was negative coverage after
his 2019 decision to call off the airstrike after Iran downed the U.S.
surveillance drone, officials said. Trump was also frustrated that the details
of his internal deliberations had leaked out and felt he looked weak, the
officials said.
The United States tracked Soleimani’s movements for several days, keeping
Trump apprised, and decided that their best opportunity to kill him would be
near the Baghdad airport, the senior administration official said.
He ultimately gave final approval just before the strike, a senior
administration official said, making the call from his golf resort.
Trump also had history on his mind. The president has long fixated on
Benghazi and the Obama administration’s response to it, say lawmakers and aides
who have spoken to him, and felt the response to this week’s attack on the
embassy and the killing of an American contractor would make him look stronger
compared with his predecessor.
“Benghazi has loomed large in his mind,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.) in an interview, explaining the response this week.
Graham was at Mar-a-Lago on Monday and said the president told him he was
concerned they “were going to hit us again” and that he was considering hitting
the Iranians.
No specific plan was ready to kill him, but it was on Trump’s mind, Graham
said.
“He was more thinking out loud, but he was determined to do something to
protect Americans. Killing the contractor really changed the equation,” Graham
said.
“He was saying, ‘This guy is a bad guy, he’s up to no good, we have to do
something,’ ” Graham said.
After the attack, U.S. officials in Iraq braced themselves for a range of
possible responses, from direct attacks by Iran to an Iraqi order that U.S.
forces and personnel leave the country.
On Friday, Graham said the president described the job as “a tough
business.”
“I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a tough business, Mr. President,’ ” Graham said.
Shane Harris and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
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Missy Ryan
Missy Ryan writes about the Pentagon, military issues and national security for
The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2014 from Reuters, where she
reported on U.S. national security and foreign policy issues. She has reported
from Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mexico, Peru,
Argentina and Chile. Follow
Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the
paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York
City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Follow
Dan Lamothe
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military and
the Pentagon. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than a decade,
traveling extensively, embedding with each service and covering combat in
Afghanistan numerous times. Follow
John Hudson
John Hudson is a national security reporter at The Washington Post covering the
State Department and diplomacy. He has reported from a mix of countries
including Ukraine, Pakistan, Malaysia, China, and Georgia. Follow
Trump repeatedly
accused Obama of starting a war with Iran to win the US election
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