Israel convinced the Trump administration that Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by a US drone strike three years ago, was an “immediate threat” to the US, former IDF intelligence chief Tamir Hayman told the UK’s Jewish News in an exclusive interview published on Monday.

Hayman explained that after Soleimani helped defeat Islamic State, the U.S. was “standing in his way because he wanted to control the Middle East. So his focus changed from Islamic State to the US presence in the region.”

“Israel convinced the US of Soleimani’s malign activities against Americans. The US was mainly focused on fighting terror, not Iran. We supplied the intelligence and shared analysis and over a long period of time they were eventually convinced that Soleimani was an immediate threat to American lives and its strategic posture in the Middle East.”

Hayman elaborated that Soleimani was “unique and had huge amounts of leadership. He could stand on a hill in Syria and pinpoint to the militias how to conduct the strategy he had designed and approved with the Supreme Leader a few hours before.”

“In 2016, he elaborated on a grand master plan on how to ensure that Syria would become a second Lebanon. That there would be a Hezbollah 2.0, the transfer of Shiites into Syria, and that he would control the Syrian government. He had similar plans for Iraq and Yemen.”

“When he disappeared, you still had ‘builders’ on the ground but there was no vision,” Hayman asserted.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)