{"id":318467,"date":"2020-01-03T04:33:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T04:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=318467"},"modified":"2020-01-03T04:33:31","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T04:33:31","slug":"us-president-trump-ordered-killing-of-iran-guards-commander-confirms-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/us-president-trump-ordered-killing-of-iran-guards-commander-confirms-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"US President Trump ordered killing of Iran Guards commander, confirms White House"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-305881 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/trump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/trump.jpg 800w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/trump-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/trump-768x478.jpg 768w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/trump-696x433.jpg 696w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/trump-675x420.jpg 675w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/>US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iran Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, who died in a US-led strike at Baghdad International Airport on Friday, the White House said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cAt the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,\u201d The White House said in an official statement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cGeneral Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.\u00a0General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.\u00a0He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months \u2013 including the attack on December 27th \u2013 culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel.\u00a0General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week,\u201d the statement reads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cThis strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.\u00a0The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world,\u201d it said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Following Soleimani&#8217;s death, President Trump took to his official Twitter handle and posted an image of the US flag without any explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran\u2019s elite Quds Force was killed in an airstrike at Baghdad\u2019s international airport earlier in the day. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq\u2019s Hashed al-Shaabi military force.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF)\u00a0blamed the United States for an attack at Baghdad Airport.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iran Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, who died in a US-led strike at Baghdad International Airport on Friday, the White House said. \u201cAt the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":305881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53],"tags":[64,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318468,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318467\/revisions\/318468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/305881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}