Follow us on social

Shutterstock_1605957556-scaled

Trump Administration knew Soleimani killing risked war with Iran

Heavily redacted classified DOJ memo shows the legal contortions used to justify the 2020 assassination.

Middle East

The Trump administration acknowledged that assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 could have escalated into war with Tehran, a newly declassified memo shows.

Last week, the Biden administration released a heavily-redacted version of the legal justification for killing Soleimani, in response to a lawsuit filed by the civil liberties organization Protect Democracy.

The memo claims that Soleimani was “actively developing plans” to harm U.S. troops and diplomats in the Middle East and that the 2002 Iraq War authorization provided legal justification for the strike. Both those arguments were cited publicly by the Trump administration at the time. 

But the document also states that the administration “considered the risk that the operation could escalate into a broader conflict,” given that Soleimani was “part of the military of Iran.” In the end, “the President’s national security team advised him, based upon available intelligence, that the targeted operation would be unlikely to escalate into a full-scale war.”

Several high-level officials were known to have pushed then-President Donald Trump to carry out the assassination.

Mike Pompeo, secretary of state at the time of assassination, had met with officials to discuss ways to “take Qassem Soleimani off the board” soon after becoming CIA director in 2017, Yahoo News reported earlier this year.

Pompeo even floated a broader “leadership decapitation strategy” against Iran, reportedly telling officials, “Don’t worry about if it’s legal; that’s a question for the lawyers,” according to the Yahoo News report.

The opportunity presented itself in late December 2019, when clashes between U.S. forces and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq killed one American and 25 Iraqis, and led to a pro-Iranian mob attempting to storm the U.S. Embassy.

When the option to assassinate Soleimani was being discussed, Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Trump that he would “be held criminally negligible for the rest of your life if you don’t do this,” due to the risks posed by Soleimani’s operations to U.S. lives, according to journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in their upcoming book I Alone Can Fix It.

U.S. forces then killed Soleimani on January 3, 2020 in an airstrike outside Baghdad International Airport, where the Iranian officer was meeting with several Iraqi militia commanders. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at a U.S. air base in Iraq, injuring over a hundred Americans.

In the days following the strike, the Trump administration offered contradictory explanations in public, first claiming that Soleimani posed an “imminent” threat to U.S. troops and diplomats, then admitting that they did not know of a specific time or place Soleimani planned to harm Americans.

The Trump administration’s explanation behind closed doors was not satisfactory, either, according to several Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Administration officials “were evasive and the answers were unsatisfactory,” one anonymous Democrat told Vox, while Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) publicly denounced officials for providing “the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue.”

When asked how the administration would request legal authorization for military force, an official simply said, “I’m sure we could think of something,” according to Lee.


Baghdad, Iraq, January 3, 2020, thousands of Iraq people participating in funeral program of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani
Middle East
drug cartels mexico military
Top photo credit: January 13, 2025, Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. People close with one of the victims cry not far from the city center, where two people were killed in a shoot out between rival cartel factions. One man was found dead on a motorcycle, the other victim lay near a SUV that was riddled with bullets.(Photo by Teun Voeten/Sipa USA)

US bombing drug cartels? It'll likely fail.

North America

In 2020, during the last year of the Trump administration’s first term, President Trump asked then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper a shocking question: why can't the United States just attack the Mexican cartels and their infrastructure with a volley of missiles?

Esper recounted the moment in his memoir, using the anecdote to illustrate just how reckless Trump was becoming as his term drew to a close. Those missiles, of course, were never launched, so the entire interaction amounted to nothing in terms of policy.

keep readingShow less
Bolivia elections could signal final break with Evo Morales era
Top photo credit: Supporters of Bolivian candidate Samuel Doria Medina from Alianza Unidad party attend a closing campaign rally ahead of the August 17 general election, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, August 9, 2025. REUTERS/Ipa Ibanez

Bolivia elections could signal final break with Evo Morales era

Latin America

Bolivia heads into a critical presidential election on August 17th, the first round in what is widely expected to be a two-round contest.

With none of the five major candidates polling above 25 percent, a large “blank/nill vote campaign,” and the two left-wing candidates trailing behind the right’s candidates, the fragmented political field has raised the prospect of a run-off for the first time since 2002, before Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS)’s rise to power.

keep readingShow less
Donald Trump Zelensky Putin
Top photo credit: Donald Trump (Anna Moneymaker/Shutterstock) Volodymyr Zelensky (miss.cabul/Shutterstock) and Vladimir Putin (paparazzza/Shuttterstock)

Trump's terms for Russia-Ukraine on the right course for peace

Europe

The Trump administration has reportedly taken an essential step towards a peace settlement in Ukraine. It has stopped calling for an unconditional early ceasefire — which the Russians have always rejected — and instead offered concrete and detailed terms to Moscow.

If as reported these terms include recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Donbas, this makes excellent sense. It has been obvious since the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023 that Ukraine cannot recover these territories either by force or through negotiation.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.