WASHINGTON — Within the 10 days because it carried out the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Trump administration has been s
WASHINGTON — Within the 10 days because it carried out the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Trump administration has been struggling to draft an after-the-fact narrative to justify it. On Monday, President Trump put an finish to that hash of explanations. “It doesn’t actually matter,” he tweeted, “due to his horrible previous.”
Till that message on Twitter, the administration had insisted in varied ways in which Common Suleimani, Iran’s most vital navy official, was planning myriad “imminent” assaults. The unraveling of the reasons accelerated over the weekend after Mr. Trump stated 4 embassies had been beneath quick menace, a cost that his personal administration couldn’t again.
With the president’s newest utterance, he bolstered critics of a strike that had raised fears of an all-out warfare with Iran and had led Iraq to name on the US to depart the nation. And, the critics puzzled, was it reckless and irresponsible for the US to kill Iran’s second most vital chief if the rationale didn’t “actually matter”?
“Trump has lastly admitted the true motivation for the killing of Suleimani who had American blood on his arms: retaliation,” stated Consultant Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, who’s sponsoring laws to forestall the administration from spending federal funds on unauthorized navy motion in Iran.
Mr. Khanna and different congressional Democrats, who’ve complained about having been left in the dead of night each earlier than and after the drone strike, interpreted Mr. Trump’s tweet as proof that he should search authorization from Congress for any future strikes.
“I’ll say it once more: THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON’T WANT ANOTHER WAR BASED ON FALSE INTELLIGENCE,” Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, tweeted.
The administration’s explanations for the strike have been shifting from daily, and Monday was no exception. Mr. Trump’s tweet got here in response to unflattering articles about how Protection Secretary Mark T. Esper appeared to contradict the president’s declare that he believed there was an imminent menace on 4 American embassies within the Center East.
However Mr. Trump stated he didn’t see any inconsistencies in any respect.
“It’s been completely constant,” he stated late Monday afternoon as he left for New Orleans for the School Soccer Playoff championship sport. “We killed Suleimani, the No. 1 terrorist on this planet by each account. Dangerous particular person, killed numerous People, killed lots of people. We killed him.”
He added: “When the Democrats attempt to defend him, it’s a shame to our nation. They’ll’t do this. And let me let you know, it’s not working politically very nicely for them.”
Nonetheless, the confused messaging from Mr. Trump and his high officers after essentially the most high-stakes determination of his presidency threatened to undercut the message the administration was sending to Iran, specialists stated.
And that message was additional undercut by different tweets that Mr. Trump despatched on Monday morning. One in every of them included a photoshopped picture of Senator Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi carrying a turban and a head scarf in entrance of an Iranian flag, claiming it confirmed “the corrupted Dems making an attempt their greatest to come back to the Ayatollah’s rescue #NancyPelosiFakeNews.”
The retweeted image was essentially the most excessive model of a sentiment that the president spent the morning advancing by retweeting criticism of Ms. Pelosi, and suggesting that she was a supporter of the Iranian authorities.
Ms. Pelosi has criticized the Trump administration for the killing of General Suleimani, saying it risked a “harmful escalation of violence” and was primarily based on questionable intelligence.
The president’s stream of Twitter posts focusing on her seemed to be an try and assail her credibility the identical week she was expected to send two articles of impeachment in opposition to Mr. Trump to the Senate. The tweet was additionally a reminder of the best way Mr. Trump has previously harnessed fears of Muslims and terrorism for his personal political functions.
Responding on Twitter, Mr. Schumer asked, “President Trump: How low are you able to go?”
Dana Shell Smith, a former United States ambassador to Qatar, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Trump was partaking in “hate speech in opposition to a complete faith.”
Mr. Trump’s retweet was additionally not the primary time Republicans have tried to hyperlink Democrats to the Iranian authorities by means of the usage of doctored pictures.
Consultant Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, posted a photograph final week of former President Barack Obama shaking arms with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. That picture, nonetheless, was revealed to be doctored years in the past. Mr. Obama by no means met Mr. Rouhani in particular person.
Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has additionally used Twitter to share videos posted by a fringe British ultranationalist group purportedly exhibiting Muslims committing acts of violence.
“This tweet contrasts so starkly with the seriousness of the particular state of affairs with Iran,” stated Ben…