Regime officials have defended Trump's decision to order the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by saying he was planning to order an attack on American targets within days, but was he really?
It's possible that he coincidentally was, but it could also be true that the regime did not have specific knowledge of an attack they claimed was imminent.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on Fox News last night where he said they don't actually know when or where an attack was coming.
“There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qassem Soleimani,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a Fox News interview that aired Thursday. “We don’t know precisely when, and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.”
National security adviser Robert O’Brien similarly had to admit during an interview on National Public Radio that aired Friday morning that he too didn’t know any more details about the alleged coming attacks.
To say that Soleimani was plotting something is nebulous enough to be true but it also doesn't mean an attack was imminent. Our own military officials draw up plans as a matter of course, but they aren't carried out until the order is given.
To be skeptical of the regime's actions and Trump's own motives is not a defense of Soleimani; a man who was undoubtedly responsible for many bad things, but the world is a bit more complicated than separating the good guys from the bad guys especially when a bad guy sits in our own White House.
Trump placed the lives of millions of people including innocents civilians and American military service members in jeopardy by ordering an assassination that, that the moment, looks poorly justified if not illegal.
If Trump had never ordered the assassination, over 170 people killed in an accidental fog-of-war attack on an airliner above Iran would probably still be alive.