Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still has not totally abandoned the pretext that the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani was based on an “imminent threat,” but is moving to rebrand the operation as part of a broad new strategy “that also applies to China and Russia.”



Pompeo set this rather disturbing claim out in talks at Stanford’s Hoover Institute. He avoided mention of the “imminent threat” talking point that President Trump has since abandoned. He says that killing Soleimani was part of the Trump Administration’s goal of “real deterrence.”



He said nations have to understand that the US is not only capable of imposing cost on nations by killing their leaders but “willing to do so,” saying that the killing put the US in the “greatest position of strength ever.”



Pompeo presented the killing of Soleimani as part of the same strategy that has seen the US sending lethal military aid to Ukraine, and withdrawal of the US from arms control deals and testing of intermediate-range nuclear weapons. He also said sending more ships through the South China Sea was “restoring credibility.”





Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz