Though NBC News didn’t identify any individuals by name, the outlet says that persons serving in U.S. leadership when the country carried out a strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in 2020 say Donald Trump’s characterization is wrong.
Trump brought up the operation during recent remarks in Florida, where he criticized leadership in Israel for supposedly cooperating in preparations for the strike before an abrupt withdrawal shortly before its completion. “Israel was never part of the operation, the U.S. officials involved in the planning said,” per NBC’s reporting. They also had remarks from a specific individual. A former senior official in the White House said the Israeli government was “never on board with it. They always thought it was a dangerous and destabilizing idea.”
In the same speech, Trump praised the supposed prowess in strategy displayed lately by terror groups that have targeted Israel, where the death toll has surpassed 1,300 amid recent violence led in large part by Hamas, which infamously operates in the Gaza Strip. The former president called these forces “smart,” applying the moniker specifically to Hezbollah, an organization that operates in Lebanon, which borders Israel to the north. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are formally recognized as terrorist organizations by the United States.
Though he wasn’t morally endorsing the groups’ aims, Trump’s characterization of their operations as “smart” still denies the facts, since what has their terrorism brought but more death and destruction? Trump, though, has even applied this characterization to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s violence against Ukraine — where the devastating impacts on civilians and the general destruction that Russian forces have enacted evoke the same rebuttal. “After Hamas slaughters hundreds of Jewish families, and Israel confronts an unprecedented security crisis, Donald Trump attacks the Israeli govt and praises Hezbollah terrorists. Are Republicans really going to nominate this dangerous man to be President of the United States?” ex-GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney asked.
