Shortly before, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave extensive interviews to 'Fox and Friends' and CNN, also claiming Soleimani's death disrupted an 'imminent attack' on American targets in the Middle East.
In his first comments on his decision to authorize the killing of Iran's top general, President Donald Trump blamed Qassem Soleimani for the killing or wounding thousands of Americans, tweeting Friday morning he"was plotting to kill many more ... but got caught!"
The assassination of perhaps the second most important official in Iran's government, behind Ayatollah Khamenei, marked a major escalation in months of tension between the U.S. and Iran. Pompeo and several Republican lawmakers said the strike came after months of warnings to Tehran, which were ignored as Iran's proxies came increasingly close to killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- succeeding last Friday with a rocket attack that killed a U.S. civilian contractor and wounded several U.S.
Pompeo declined to offer many specifics, but called it an"imminent attack that [Soleimani] was working actively ... using proxy forces in the region" and"that would have put hundreds of lives at risk." The Pentagon confirmed late Thursday that Trump had ordered the airstrike, but made no mention of an"imminent attack."
A source told ABC News that preparations for a strike on Soleimani began last week after the U.S. contractor was killed at an Iraqi base near Kirkuk, Iraq, last Friday. The Trump administration blamed that attack on Kata'ib Hezbollah , a Shiite militia group with direct ties to Iran's Quds Force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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