On Thursday, Qasem Soleimani,
leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed in an
operation ordered by US President Donald Trump. The general was killed in
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.
While defending the action, the
US Department of State said Soleimani was killed for plotting an “imminent
attack” on US interests in the Middle East. There have been different reactions
to the killing; Iran has vowed to retaliate “harshly”. Some US security experts
who featured on CNN earlier on Friday said the action was in order, accusing
the late Iranian general of coordinating the killings of about 600 American
citizens.
However, in 2011, Trump accused
Barack Obama, his predecessor, of plotting a war with Iran to get reelected. He
said Obama did not have the ability to negotiate and that the war was his only
option.
“Our president will start a war
with Iran because he has no ability to negotiate. He is weak and ineffective so
the only way he figures that he will get reelected is to start a war with
Iran,” he had said in a video shared by MSNBC on Friday.
“Unfortunately we have a
president who doesn’t know the first thing about negotiation. We have a real
problem in the White House, so I believe he will attack Iran sometime prior to
the election. Isn’t it pathetic?”
Ironically, Trump who made the
prediction is “starting a war” ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he
has indicated interest in.
Before he left office, the US
relationship with Iran was cordial but things went south upon Trump’s
assumption of office. The incumbent US president had abandoned the nuclear deal
referred to as the signature foreign policy achievement of Obama.
The deal reached after more than
two years of tough negotiations was between Iran, US, UK, Russia, France,
China, Germany and the European Union.
The agreement aimed at ensuring
that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful in return for the
lifting of sanctions.
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