Apparently the “kill Soleimani” option presented to Donald Trump was a little more expansive than we’ve been told:
On the day the U.S. military killed a top Iranian commander in Baghdad, U.S. forces carried out another top secret mission against a senior Iranian military official in Yemen, according to U.S. officials. The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, a financier and key commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been active in Yemen, did not result in his death, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
….“If we had killed him, we’d be bragging about it that same night,” a senior U.S. official said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified military operation.
Was anyone else on the list? Exactly what was the “extreme” option presented to Trump in hopes that he’d pick one of the moderate ones?
In related news, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been taking lessons from Don Rumsfeld. Asked by Laura Ingraham to define “imminent,” he replied, “There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qassem Soleimani. We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.” Republicans have a real problem with that word.
As an added bonus, note Laura Ingraham’s derisive air quotes at the start about Iran downing a Ukrainian airliner “by accident.” Apparently she thinks they shot it down deliberately.
