WASHINGTON — Protection Secretary Mark T. Esper mentioned on Sunday that he by no means noticed any particular piece of proof that Iran was plannin
WASHINGTON — Protection Secretary Mark T. Esper mentioned on Sunday that he by no means noticed any particular piece of proof that Iran was planning an assault on 4 American embassies, as President Trump had claimed final week as a justification for the strike on an Iranian basic that despatched the USA and Iran to the brink of struggle.
“I didn’t see one with regard to 4 embassies,” Mr. Esper mentioned on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” However he added: “I share the president’s view that most likely — my expectation was they had been going to go after our embassies. The embassies are essentially the most outstanding show of American presence in a rustic.”
The muddled message on Sunday by Mr. Esper and different administration officers solely added to the general public debate relating to the Jan. three strike that killed Iran’s most necessary basic, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, and whether or not there was applicable justification for the killing. The administration has supplied shifting justifications for the strike.
In current days administration officers have averted providing specifics about what, precisely, prompted the airstrike, however on Friday Mr. Trump mentioned that a part of the explanation was that Iran was planning assaults on 4 American embassies.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Mr. Esper had sounded extra supportive of Mr. Trump’s declare.
“What the president mentioned in regard to the 4 embassies is what I imagine as effectively,” he mentioned. “And he mentioned he believed that they most likely, that they might have been focusing on the embassies within the area.”
However showing on “Fox Information Sunday,” Robert O’Brien, the nationwide safety adviser, had additionally performed down Mr. Trump’s declare of particular, imminent threats to 4 American embassies within the area.
“Look, it’s all the time tough, even with the beautiful intelligence that we’ve, to know precisely what the targets are,” Mr. O’Brien mentioned. “We knew there have been threats to American amenities, now whether or not they had been bases, embassies — you realize it’s all the time onerous till the assault occurs.”
“However we had very sturdy intelligence,” he added.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah, one of many administration’s most outspoken Republican critics within the aftermath of the strike, mentioned on CNN on Sunday that he was “anxious” in regards to the high quality of the knowledge that nationwide safety officers had been sharing with Congress and had not “been in a position to but confirm particular particulars of the imminence of the assault.”
“I imagine that the briefers and the president believed that they’d a foundation for concluding that there was an imminent assault, I don’t doubt that, however it’s irritating to be informed that and never get the main points behind it,” he mentioned.
Requested particularly whether or not administration officers had briefed Congress on Iranian threats to 4 American embassies, as they’ve subsequently claimed, Mr. Lee mentioned he didn’t imagine so.
“I didn’t hear something about that,” he mentioned. “A number of of my colleagues have mentioned the identical. So, that was information to me, and it’s actually not one thing that I recall being raised within the labeled briefing.”
Nicholas Fandos and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.