Mike Pompeo: Iran’s Qasem Soleimani killed to stop plot against 500 Americans

Mike Pompeo: Iran’s Qasem Soleimani killed to stop plot against 500 Americans
June 18, 2022, 4:12 pm

Posters of slain Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani are placed on chairs as supporters of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah gather for his televised speech in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 following the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Soleimani. The posters read: Sayyad of martyrs in the axis of resistance. The martyr Hajj Qassem Soleimani. (File photo: AP)

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Iran's former top military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed to stop a plot against 500 Americans.

Pompeo said in an interview with Al Arabiya published Friday: "General Soleimani was engaged in a plot to kill another 500 Americans. We had the opportunity to take down that plot, and we did."

Asked about the circumstances behind the Soleimani’s killing despite the warnings, he said: "Much like the warnings that said if you want to withdraw from the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - Iran nuclear deal) there will be war, and much like the warnings that said if the United States moves its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem there will be war, there were warnings that said if you strike at General Soleimani there will be war."

Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference after a signing ceremony between members of Afghanistan's Taliban delegation and US officials in Doha February 29, 2020. (File photo Reuters)

He said: "Well, we didn't just do one of those or two of those. We did each of those three things and there was no war."

Asked whether it was a fast decision made by the government, he said "we had been working to protect our assets in Iraq, our people in Syria and in fact, Americans all across the world for an awfully long time."

Gunmen in Iraq wound two protesters who disrupted Soleimani memorial

"We had been watching what the Quds Force was up to," he said. "And so in that sense, it was a project that we had been engaged in continuously and then we had this opportunity to stop what was an imminent attack on US resources, US assets, US people and ... the president made the decision to just do that."

Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike Jan. 3, 2020.

Source: aa

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