President Trump said Friday that four U.S. embassies, including the American Embassy in Baghdad, were targeted in a planned attack orchestrated by Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in an American drone strike last week. The president made the new comments in a Fox News interview as his administration faces pressure to provide more information about the imminent threat Iran’s top general posed that justified the U.S. strike.
Earlier Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at the White House that Soleimani was planning “a broad, large-scale attack” against American facilities, including U.S. embassies, in the Middle East, but he didn’t provide specific information about the plot. “We don’t know exactly which day it would have been executed, but it was very clear: Qassem Soleimani himself was plotting a broad, large-scale attack against American interests, and those attacks were imminent,” Pompeo told CBS News.
Asked about the plot in an interview on Fox News that aired Thursday night, Pompeo said, “We don’t know precisely when, and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.” Sources told CBS News that members of Congress were not told during a briefing by administration officials earlier this week about any imminent threats to U.S. embassies.
