Iran January 6, 2020
Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated, exploding
Trump's lie of 'imminent attacks'
The Trump administration claimed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was
planning "imminent attacks" on US interests when it assassinated him. That
lie was just destroyed, but not before countless corporate media outlets
transmitted it to the public.
By Max Blumenthal
Desperate to justify the US drone assassination of Iranian Major General
Qasem Soleimani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that Washington had
made an "intelligence-based assessment" that Soleimani was "actively
planning in the region" to attack American interests before he was killed.
President Donald Trump justified his fateful decision to kill the Iranian
general in even more explicit language, declaring that Soleimani was
planning "imminent attacks" on US diplomatic facilities and personnel across
the Middle East.
"We took action last night to stop a war," Trump claimed. "We did not take
action to start a war."
Trump's dubious rationale for an indisputably criminal assassination has
been repeated widely across corporate media networks, and often without any
skepticism or debate.
At a January 3 State Department briefing, where reporters finally got the
chance to demand evidence for the claim of an "imminent" threat, one US
official erupted in anger.
"Jesus, do we have to explain why we do these things?" he barked at the
press.
Two days later, when Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed his
country's parliament, Trump's justification for killing Soleimani was
exposed as a cynical lie.
According to Abdul-Mahdi, he had planned to meet Soleimani on the morning
the general was killed to discuss a diplomatic rapproachment that Iraq was
brokering between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Abdul-Mahdi said that Trump personally thanked him for the efforts, even as
he was planning the hit on Soleimani - thus creating the impression that the
Iranian general was safe to travel to Baghdad.
"I was supposed to meet Soleimani at the morning the day he was killed, he
came to deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we
delivered from Saudi to Iran" Iraqi PM said.
- Mustafa Salim (@Mustafa_salimb) January 5, 2020
Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad not to plan attacks on American targets,
but to coordinate de-escalation with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, he was killed
while on an actual peace mission that could have created political distance
between the Gulf monarchy and members of the US-led anti-Iran axis like
Israel.
The catastrophic results of Soleimani's killing recall the Obama
administration's 2016 assassination of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, a
Taliban leader who was eager to negotiate a peaceful end to the US
occupation of Afghanistan. Mansur's death wound up empowering hardline
figures in the Taliban who favored a total military victory over the US and
triggered an uptick in violence across the country, dooming hopes for a
negotiated exit.
Since Soleimani's assassination, Iraq's parliament has voted to expel all US
troops from the country and Iran's Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sworn to
exact a "severe revenge" on the "the criminals who have stained their hands
with [Soleimani's] and the other martyrs' blood."
Trump, for his part, tweeted a litany of gangster-like threats, promising to
destroy Iranian cultural sites if it retaliated and pledging to sanction
Iraq "like they've never been before" if it ousted US troops.
..targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by
Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the
Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST
AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020
Trump's treacherous assassination has brought the US closer to war than ever
before against a country more militarily potent than any adversary it has
faced since the Korean War. And as with the failed US invasion of Iraq,
Washington's casus belli for triggering this conflict was based on falsified
intelligence sold to Americans by administration officials, and on a pliant
Beltway media acting as their megaphone.
With its claim of "imminent attacks," the Trump administration has
essentially re-mixed Condoleeza Rice's 2003 warning that "we don't want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Back then, the US attacked a sovereign
state to rid it of WMD that did not exist. This time, it killed the
second-most important Iranian official to prevent a killing spree that was
not on the way. And Trump administration officials knew they were lying.
In fact, Pompeo pitched assassinating Soleimani to Trump several months ago,
well before any attacks were "imminent." And in the wake of the general's
killing, a US official revealed to the New York Times that the NSA had
intercepted "communications the United States had between Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General Suleimani showing that the
ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the general for an attack."
But the preponderance of evidence exposing Trump's basis for killing
Soleimani as a titanic lie has not generated the same level of media
interest as the lie itself.
On January 3, CNN assigned three reporters to disseminate the Trump
administration's disinformation about Soleimani, claiming without a hint of
critical detachment that he was "planning specific attacks on US interests,
including US personnel."
After the story went live, CNN's lead reporter, Jim Sciutto, reached out to
another official US source to "confirm" his now-discredited piece of war
propaganda. In Sciutto's mind, if more than one US official says a thing, it
must be true.
NatSec Adviser O'Brien confirms our earlier reporting on a briefing call,
saying Soleimani was planning attacks on American troops and diplomats in
the region. https://t.co/C70hNiVzCY
- Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 3, 2020
Sciutto is not just any run-of-the-mill national security reporter. During
the Obama era, he accepted a job as chief of staff at the US Embassy in
Beijing, placing himself at the center of Washington's gathering Cold War
with China. Now back behind CNN's anchor desk, Sciutto poses as a ferocious
critic of Trump while providing the Pentagon and State Department with
reliable stenographic services.
No president in recent history has been despised more viscerally by the
Beltway press corps than Trump. Nearly everything he says is met with
disdain and suspicion, even when he is telling the truth.
But when Trump and his administration attempt to lie the public into war
against a designated evildoer, a swath of the corporate media responds with
reflexive trust, then shrugs when the lie is exposed in broad daylight.
Max Blumenthal
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several
books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One
Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for
an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries,
including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a
journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous
domestic repercussions.
