An upcoming book titled ‘The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021’, reveals that former US President Donald Trump was afraid that Iran will assassinate him as revenge for the US drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. The authors also report that Trump and his advisers considered additional strikes against the country but later backed off.
Although the book is to be published in the US next week, the British daily newspaper, the Guardian was able to procure a copy. Written by a husband-and-wife team, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, the book reportedly gives a detailed account of how Trump, while bragging about the strike in public and in front of the media, was not so bullish, at least in private, less than a year later.
Baker and Glasser also map out the former president’s policy on Iran, which begins with reluctant talks regarding the nuclear deal signed during Barack Obama’s presidency to the US’s withdrawal in May 2018 and the point in June 2019 when Trump ordered air strikes against the country but called them off at the last minute.
“I thought about it for a second and I said, ‘You know what, they shot down an unmanned drone … and here we are sitting with 150 dead people that would have taken place probably within a half an hour after I said go ahead.’ And I didn’t like it…I didn’t think it was proportionate,” Trump reportedly reasoned at the time. It was later revealed that among the people who advised Trump against ordering the strikes in Iran was Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.
However, the former president went on to authorise the strike against Soleimani. Subsequently, the Pentagon said that the Iranian general had been actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region”. Soleimani was the commander of a US-designated terrorist group called the elite Quds (Jerusalem) force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
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The Iranian general was among those killed on 3 January 2020, along with some of the officials from Iran-backed Iraqi militias, as they were leaving the Baghdad airport. Soleimani’s death sent shockwaves across the world, while critics called it a reckless escalation of the tensions between Tehran and Washington, some even fearing a full-fledged war. Meanwhile, the country’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a “forceful revenge” and declared three-day national mourning for the Iranian general.
This reportedly did not stop the former president from bragging about it in a rally in Ohio, “We stopped him and we stopped him quickly and we stopped him cold,” said Trump. He added, “He was a bad guy. He was a bloodthirsty terrorist, and he’s no longer a terrorist. He’s dead.”
Later that year, Iran’s supreme leader also took to Twitter and said, “Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out should be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.” The authors of the book reported that even though Trump and his advisers were planning another strike, they later called it off because it was too close to the end of Trump’s presidency.
“At a cocktail party, Trump told several of his Florida friends he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him, so he had to go back to Washington where he would be safer,” the authors wrote. This was just before the former president returned to Washington and “turned up the heat on Mike Pence”, the former vice-president who was pressured by Trump to block the electoral college results confirming his defeat to Joe Biden.
