Though he fancies himself a brilliant strategist, it’s broadly understood that Donald Trump is the most impressionable person on the planet. He has been known to take foreign leaders at their word, is a sucker for flattery, and will often follow the advice of whoever he last spoke to. So while it was ultimately the president who ordered the killing last week of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani and brought tensions between Washington and Tehran to a head, the origin of that idea was initially unclear.

The Washington Post offered an answer to that question late Sunday, when it reported that the Soleimani killing was the brainchild of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, two of the biggest cheerleaders for the military operation in the days since Soleimani’s death. The two reportedly urged Trump to order a strike on the general for days in the lead-up to the operation as protests raged outside the United States embassy in Baghdad. Pompeo had been particularly relentless, reportedly calling for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard leader’s death since at least last summer. A senior U.S. official told the Post that Pompeo first floated killing Soleimani “months ago,” but at the time “neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation.”

Per the Post, Pompeo was left “morose” after failing to convince the president to retaliate against Iran after it downed a U.S. drone in June, but “recent changes to Trump’s national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian aggression” afforded him another opportunity to press for action. Importantly, Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper were reportedly in “lockstep” when it came to pushing for the strike, though the New York Times reported that Trump’s choice to pursue the most extreme course of action “stunned” Pentagon officials.

In the aftermath, Pompeo and Pence have both staunchly defended the move. Pence falsely claimed in a tweet that Soleimani was directly involved in 9/11, and Pompeo has repeatedly said that the killing prevented an “imminent” attack on U.S. troops in the region. “We took a bad guy off the battlefield,” Pompeo told CNN. “We made the right decision.” On the flip side, if it turns out to have been wrong decision—and there’s a very good chance it might!—it’ll be Pompeo, Pence, and Esper who will likely answer for it. There are already significant doubts as to whether the new “threat” posed by by Soleimani truly warranted such dramatic action; should Trump’s back-and-forth with Iran ultimately embroil the United States in another Middle Eastern war, Pompeo and his future political ambitions could go down with the ship.

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