Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was planning an imminent strike on Americans before a U.S. drone strike killed the foreign military leader.
Pompeo appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday to respond to claims that evidence of an imminent attack on Americans was “thin.” Pompeo said that senior national security leadership with access to all of the evidence had “no skepticism” that Soleimani was planning an attack on American targets.
“The senior leadership who had access to all of the intelligence — there was no skepticism. I think [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. Milley used the term, ‘We would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this strike,'” Pompeo said.
“The intelligence assessment made clear that no action — allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting, his planning, and his terror campaign — created more risk than taking the action that we took last week,” Pompeo continued.
Following the airstrike that killed Soleimani, Pompeo said the move was in response to an “imminent threat” on Americans. The New York Times reported on Saturday, however, that several administration officials believed the evidence that suggested Soleimani was planning an attack amounted to “business as usual” and “a normal Monday in the Middle East.”
According to the paper, intelligence suggested that Soleimani was seeking approval for a strike that could have killed hundreds of Americans at embassies, consulates, and military bases in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Officials disagreed whether the evidence justified a belief in an attack, and some said that an attack was not imminent because Soleimani had not yet received approval from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
