The Trump administration’s first explanation barely lasted a day.
both reported that the choice to launch the drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani had been on a “menu” of options that top officials had presented to President Donald Trump for how to respond to recent Iranian-orchestrated violence against U.S. personnel in Iraq. According to the Times, “Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable”—and they were surprised that he chose this one.
What were these officials possibly thinking? After three years of Trump repeatedly upending traditional U.S. military and foreign policy practice on a whim, what made Trump’s aides so confident he wouldn’t take the most “extreme” course of action? Perhaps they took him at his word that he wanted to make peace with Iran and avoid endless wars in the Middle East.
But subsequent reporting suggests there was no ticking bomb. The Soleimani strike was first raised not as a preventive measure, but as ato an attack on a U.S. facility in Iraq that killed an American contractor a week earlier. Trump initially opted for one of the more “moderate” options,of the Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah.
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