US officials have struggled to present a cohesive narrative on the threat allegedly posed by Qasem Soleimani to US interests in the Middle East, vacillating on whether the senior Iranian general posed an “imminent” threat or not.
US President Donald Trump has accused the “Fake News Media” and their “Democrat Partners” of doubting his administration's narrative on whether Gen. Soleimani's alleged future plans to attack the US were “imminent” or not.
According to Trump, his administration was “in agreement” that the threat was “imminent,” but “it doesn't really matter because of [Soleimani's] horrible past!”
The US president accused the media and his Democratic opponents of “trying to make terrorist Soleimani into a wonderful guy, only because I did what should have been done for 20 years.”
Trump appeared to misspell “imminent” in his first tweet, writing it as “eminent” instead before correcting. In the follow-up tweet, he (presumably mistakenly) referred to his opponents as the “Rafical Left.”
Senior White House, State Department and Pentagon officials have had a difficult time sticking to a single narrative on the intelligence justifying the US decision to assassinate Soleimani. On Sunday, Secretary of Defence Mark Esper appeared to challenge the president over claims that Soleimani planned to attack four US embassies, saying that he personally “didn't see” any decisive intelligence with regard to the embassy threat…
