Official Trump line on Soleimani assassination begins to unravel

The official line from the White House over why US President Donald Trump approved the assassination of Iranian commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani is beginning to unravel as new reports emerge about the president’s “indefensible” decision, according to US media outlets.

The Trump administration claims it carried out the assassination to avert an "imminent attack," which is being faced with growing suspicion and skepticism in the US.

“At face value, that official line has been met with skepticism, in large part because Trump and his team have earned a reputation for habitual lying,” MSNBC said in an article published on Monday.

“But additional reporting over the weekend has cast further doubt on the dubious White House version of events,” the article said.

“it’s a problem that the official White House line is unraveling. It’s just as significant a problem that the alternate explanations are indefensible,” it added.

MSNBC cited a report by The New York Times on Sunday as an example. The newspaper said in a report that top American military officials offered Trump the option of killing General Soleimani, but they didn’t think the president would approve it because they viewed as the most extreme option.

“They didn’t think he would take it. In the wars waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable…. By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned,” the Times said.

Several US lawmakers say there was no evidence of an imminent attack by Iran.

The same Times report added that there were “disputes” within the administration about the “significance” of the intelligence. The same article added that some officials “voiced private skepticism about the rationale” behind the strike, with one describing the US intelligence as “thin.”

The Trump administration’s absence of credibility, along with the political context, make it difficult to believe the White House’s line about an imminent attack that would have necessitated an immediate assault, MSNBC said.

“Trump’s official story about one of the president’s most dangerous decisions doesn’t appear to be true,” the network added.

A US drone carried out an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday, assassinating General Soleimani, who was the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), as well as eight other people.

Iran has pledged a “harsh revenge” against America for the assassination.

The Trump administration is already in danger of losing control of the swift chain reaction and political storm unleashed by its killing of Soleimani, according to CNN.

US assassination underscores Trump's ‘lawless thuggery’

The US assassination of General Soleimani has brought America to the verge of an illegal war with Iran and is the latest example of Trump’s “lawless thuggery,” according to an editorial in The Guardian.

Although other US presidents have disregarded the rule of domestic and international laws, Trump is unique is this regard due to the overall pattern, the British newspaper said in its article published on Sunday.

“Trump is substituting lawless thuggery for impartial justice,” it said. “Viewed as a whole, Trump’s lawlessness is systematically corrupting justice in the US.”

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