US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani’s killing saved American lives in the Middle East.
While talking with CNN, Mr Pompeo said ”I can’t talk too much about the nature of the threats. But the American people should know that the President’s decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives”.
Qasem Soleimani was killed by US airstrike in the outskirt of Baghdad Internation Airport on Friday.
The US has long been hunting for him and accused him of plotting the attack in the country’s Baghdad embassy. He has been accused of several attacks on US military bases and citizens.
Pompeo said Soleimani was “actively plotting” in the region to “take big action, as he described it, that would have put hundreds of lives at risk.”
Americans ”are safer in the region” after the demise of Soleimani, he said.
Describing the assessment of US intelligent community, Pompeo said the risk of ding nothing was enormous.
Soleimani was one of the most powerful and popular men in Iran. He is considered a ‘brave hero’ to his fellow citizens.
Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force change Iran’s landscape in the Middle East.
There are heavy reactions coming from every corner of the globe. Iran vows ‘severe revenge’ over the killing.
Russian condemns the killing as ‘reckless step’. The country’s foreign ministry has said it views the “murder of Soleimani by a US strike as a reckless step that will lead to a rise in tension in the whole region”.
US Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden described the attack as a “hugely escalatory move in an already dangerous region” and said President Donald Trump had “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox”.
Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif tweeted: ‘The US’ act of international terrorism, targeting & assassinating General Soleimani—THE most effective force fighting Daesh (ISIS), Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al—is extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation. The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.”
AFP reports the US Embassy in Baghdad has urged citizens to “depart Iraq immediately” following the strike.
Who was Qasem Soleimani?
Soleimani was a major figure the US has been long hunting for. Since 1998, Maj Gen Qasem Soleimani led Iran’s Quds Force – an elite unit in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. His force handles clandestine operations abroad.
He first came to prominence in his country serving in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and later played a vital role bolstering Bashar al-Assad’s Iranian-supported government in the Syrian Civil War, and in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq.