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International

How Trump Planned the Drone Strike With a Tight Circle of Aides

17:45, Saturday, 04 January, 2020
How Trump Planned the Drone Strike With a Tight Circle of Aides

Iranian general Qassem Soleimani haunted the U.S. for more than two decades, a lethal adversary blamed for the deaths of hundreds of American troops in the Middle East.

Yet his stature as the second most powerful person in Iran made him almost untouchable in the eyes of Donald Trump’s predecessors.

That longstanding U.S. restraint ended in dramatic fashion Thursday with Trump’s order to launch a nighttime airstrike in Baghdad that killed Soleimani and drove tensions with Iran to the boiling point.

The president’s decision to target the powerful head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force came together swiftly, following the death of an American contractor in a Dec. 27 rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia against a U.S. base in Iraq. Soon after the attack, Trump ordered a handful of his most senior aides to begin planning a strike on the Iranian general, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Trump administration had recently asked France and other allies to warn Tehran against killing Americans, according to one of the people. For the president, a red line had been crossed.

Trump’s close circle of national security advisers was scattered across the country for the holidays -- Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was in Key West; National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien was in California; and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo was in Washington, after canceling planned travel to Ukraine and other countries on Jan. 1.

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