Trump: Israel was part of plans to kill Qassem Soleimani, backed out at last moment

Former US President Donald Trump says Israel was a part of the plans to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq in early 2020.

Speaking to Fox News, the Republican presidential frontrunner says: “When we took out Soleimani, you know Israel was supposed to do it with us. Two days before the take-out they said ‘We can’t do it. We can’t do it.’ I said ‘What?’ ‘We can’t do it.'”

Trump went on: “Then I had a certain general, who’s great, I said, ‘So general, do we do it ourselves?’ He said ‘We can, sir, it’s up to you.’ I said ‘We’ll do it.’

Trump claims Iran called him while he was president to give him a heads up about attacks they were directing against the US military. Bartiromo seems dubious about it. He also claims Israel was supposed to be involved in taking out Soleimani but got cold feet at the last minute. pic.twitter.com/7GblLQFLpp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 4, 2024

“But Israel was a part of it. You know, Bibi was a big part of it. And we had everything planned, everything. Because what [Soleimani did] was terrible. What he did to us was terrible. Killed so many of our soldiers. Killed so many people.”

Trump asserted that attacks by Iranian militias on US forces that killed three troops “would have never happened with me.”

“I had Iran in check. Do you know, we hit them very hard for something that they did, and they had to hit back, they feel they have to do that and I understand that. Do you know, they called me to tell me ‘We’re going to hit a certain location but we’re not gonna hit it, it’s gonna be outside of the perimeter’… They let us know. And we had 16 missiles that went off… And we knew they weren’t going to hit. And now I reveal it… So they aimed those missiles and they said, ‘Please don’t attack us, we’re not going to hit you.’ That was respect, we had respect.”