President Donald Trump has justified the killing of Qasem Soleimani by defending Americans.
Trump tweeted on Friday that the head of the Iranian Quds brigades had been responsible for the deaths of a "large number of demonstrators" in Iraq and the murder of "thousands of US citizens" over a long period of time. The top military also planned to "kill many more - but he was caught!" According to Trump, he should have been killed "many years ago" - an allusion to the behavior of his predecessors like Barak Obama or George W. Bush, who always shy away from the liquidation of Soleimani.
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Qasem Soleimani: US military killed the Irna general with a drone in Baghdad
Shortly before, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had also spoken of an impending attack in which numerous Americans were to be killed. The attack would have "put dozens, maybe hundreds, of lives at risk for US citizens," Pompeo told CNN, citing intelligence agencies' findings. "We knew it was imminent," said Pompeo. The killing of Soleimani was therefore an "act of self-defense".
Pompeo: USA "still committed to de-escalation"
Pompeo also joined several countries' de-escalation requests: Iran should behave like a normal country and not support terrorists across the region, Pompeo told Fox News. And: "We don't want a war with Iran."
The US government will not leave Iran's provocations unanswered. The military operation was "completely legal" and "strategically correct". "The absence of Qasem Soleimani is a blessing for this region," said Pompeo.
Pompeo wrote on Twitter that he had spoken to German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas "about Trump's decision to" defend himself and shut down Qasem Soleimani ". Germany was also "concerned about Iran's ongoing military provocations". The US felt "still committed to de-escalation".
Pompeo spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said after calling the two ministers that the fatal attack was justified given the "immediate threats to the lives of US citizens," the US should have defended itself.
UN diplomat Agnes Callamard had criticized the nightly killing of Soleimani by a missile launched by a US drone as a possible human rights crime.
In a longer thread on Twitter, she explains at which points the United States violated international law. "Justifications for such killings are very narrowly defined, and it is difficult to imagine how one of them can be applied to these killings," wrote Callamard, the UN Human Rights Bureau's independent rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
