US soldiers prepare to fly to the Middle East on a plane from North Carolina on Saturday, January 4, 2020 (AFP)

London, Washington- Asharq Al-Awsat and Elie Youssef

US Vice President Mike Pence has accused Qassem Soleimani of helping 10 out of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

In a series of tweets, Pence said he had assisted in their clandestine travel to Afghanistan.

These tweets were part of his defense of the US killing of the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ “Quds Force”.

Pence described Soleimani as an “evil man who was responsible for killing thousands of Americans.”

In response to Pence, some were quick to point out that 19 terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks, not 12. But Pence's press secretary, Katie Waldman, explained later that he was referring to 12 of the 19 kidnappers who “crossed Afghanistan.”

According to the US administration's report on these attacks, at least eight of the kidnappers “crossed Iran en route to or from Afghanistan.”

US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, for his part, said in 2019 that there is a pattern of ties between Iran and al-Qaeda going back to after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo hedged on whether the authorization of force by the US Congress days after the September 11 attacks would allow the United States to strike Iran.

“The factual question with respect to Iran's connections to al-Qaeda is very real. They have hosted al-Qaeda, and they have permitted al-Qaeda to transit their country,” he said.

The US media and press continued their coverage of Soleimani’s assassination near Baghdad airport.

Additional details revealed how President Donald Trump made his decision and the reasons behind liquidating the man who had been on the US terrorist list for nearly two decades without being killed.

When Trump’s national security team came to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, they weren’t expecting him to approve an operation to kill Soleimani, according to Los Angeles Times.

Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had gone to Palm Beach to brief Trump on airstrikes the Pentagon had just carried out in Iraq and Syria against Iranian-sponsored groups.

One briefing slide shown to Trump listed several follow-up steps the US could take, among them targeting Soleimani, according to a senior US official familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to talk about the meeting on the record.