Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that prior to the elimination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by a US airstrike, he was plotting to kill 500 Americans.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Dubai-based Al Arabiya, Pompeo first spoke about the folly of the Biden administration’s attempts to sign a nuclear deal with Iran, saying that the “these are evil theocrats intent on the destruction of the nation of Israel and the United States of America…every dollar that goes to the Iranian regime hastens the moment when they will not only have sufficient fissile material for a weapon, but the capacity to deliver one.”

The interviewer then asked Pompeo to speak about the circumstances behind the decision to eliminate Soleimani, despite all the warnings in Washington at the time.

Pompeo responded: “Yes, much like the warning that if the US withdraws from the JCPOA, there will be war, and much like the warning that if the United States moves its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there will be war, there were warnings that said that if we strike at General Soleimani, there will be war.”

“Well, we didn’t just do one of those, or two of those. We did each of those three things and there was no war.”

“It was because America was demonstrably prepared to protect the things that matter to the American people. General Soleimani was engaged in a plot to kill another 500 Americans. We had the opportunity to take down that plot and we did.”

Pompeo then elaborated that at the time of the elimination, there was a warning of an
“imminent attack on US resources, US assets, and US people.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)