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Trump Says Iran Had Planned to Attack Four U.S. Embassies

Trump Says Iran Had Planned to Attack Four U.S. Embassies

Trump Says Iran Had Planned to Attack Four U.S. Embassies
U.S. President Donald Trump disembarks Marine One. (Photographer: Alex Edelman/Bloomberg) 

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said Iran had been targeting four American embassies before he ordered the killing of a top Iranian general.

“I can reveal that I believe it would’ve been four embassies,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham scheduled to air Friday.

On Thursday, Trump said Iran was “looking to blow up” the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, without mentioning the three other embassies.

Trump ordered the Jan. 2 strike on Qassem Soleimani after violent protests at the Baghdad embassy that the U.S. says Iran instigated. No Americans were killed in the strike.

The president’s justifications for killing Soleimani have shifted. He has said the Iranian general was planning unspecified “imminent” attacks against U.S. forces. He has also blamed Soleimani’s history of helping to foment unrest in the Middle East and provide weapons to Iraqi militia that were used to kill American troops in the Iraq War.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Kevin Whitelaw

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.