The scene and Trump’s exuberant mood was a sharp contrast to the level of anxiety that awaited the president on Monday in Washington.
“Right now, we’re in the process of waiting to be struck by a country that, from a conventional military point of view is not very capable compared to us, but they’re very capable in the cyber world,” a former White House official said. “They’re very capable in terms of terrorism. They’ve got cells heavily represented in places like Africa, the Middle East and Europe but Latin America as well.”
The former official characterized the president’s current tweeting and rhetoric about hitting Iranian cultural sites as him “just huffing and puffing” in the moment. “This is just a big testosterone thing for [Trump], and he doesn’t think about the next step.”
A second former White House official said he was surprised by Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani — long seen as a threat by U.S. officials — because historically Trump is not a person who likes to engage the American military in international conflicts. “He doesn’t want to risk American lives for unnecessary actions,” the former official said.
The senior Pentagon official characterized the strike against the No. 2 in Iran as a culmination of recent events.
“It was the result of a major uptick of violence by Iran over the past 30 days. You had the British oil tanker situation, the shoot-down of one of our drones and then the U.S. Embassy demonstration last week. The administration has demonstrated tremendous restraint, but I think that dynamic changes when you have a U.S. citizen killed on Iraqi soil by Iranian proxies,” the official said. “Everyone sees it as different when there’s a loss of life, rather than an attack against a capability of some kind.”
The White House is expected to brief lawmakers on Wednesday about Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani, with Democrats demanding the administration explain its justification for both the strike and its timing. The secretary of State, secretary of Defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of the CIA are all expected to present information in a classified briefing on Wednesday with senators and no staff, according to a Republican aide.
“They will be briefed, but they also should calm down and celebrate, not denigrate, the fact that the world’s greatest terrorist, who is single-handedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans … they should celebrate not denigrate that he was killed,” top White House official Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Monday morning, adding that the president is open to renegotiating a nuclear deal with Iran if “Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country.”
In Tehran on Monday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said prayers over Soleimani’s coffin as millions of people took to the streets.
Source: politico.com
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