Attorney General William Barr defended President Trump’s decision earlier this month to carry out an airstrike against Iran’s terror chief, Qassem Soleimani.
“It was not a close call,” he said Monday during a press conference.
“The president had the authority to act as he did on a number of different bases,” Barr said. “This was a legitimate act of self-defense which interrupted an ongoing campaign” against the United States being carried out by Soleimani and his proxies, and that the strike “re-established deterrence” against Iran.
Barr touched on recent attacks in Iraq against the U.S. — which included the death of a U.S. contractor and the violent storming of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — and said Iran’s proxies were continuing to plan further attacks.
“The general in charge of these efforts — Soleimani — was clearly a legitimate target,” Barr said.
Soleimani was the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its specialized Quds Force, which the U.S. considers responsible for the deaths of over 600 U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War.
Barr said he believed “there was evidence of an imminent attack” but that “this discussion of imminence is a bit of a red herring” because Soleimani “was the head of a terrorist organization” and “military targets are legitimate targets.”
