TheCable

On Thursday, Qasem Soleimani, leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was killed in an operation ordered by US President Donald Trump. The general was killed in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

While defending the action, the US Department of State said Soleimani was killed for plotting an “imminent attack” on US interests in the Middle East. There have been different reactions to the killing; Iran has vowed to retaliate “harshly”. Some US security experts who featured on CNN earlier on Friday said the action was in order, accusing the late Iranian general of coordinating the killings of about 600 American citizens.

However, in 2011, Trump accused Barack Obama, his predecessor, of plotting a war with Iran to get reelected. He said Obama did not have the ability to negotiate and that the war was his only option.

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has no ability to negotiate. He is weak and ineffective so the only way he figures that he will get reelected is to start a war with Iran,” he had said in a video shared by MSNBC on Friday.

“Unfortunately we have a president who doesn’t know the first thing about negotiation. We have a real problem in the White House, so I believe he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election. Isn’t it pathetic?”

Ironically, Trump who made the prediction is “starting a war” ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has indicated interest in.

Before he left office, the US relationship with Iran was cordial but things went south upon Trump’s assumption of office. The incumbent US president had abandoned the nuclear deal referred to as the signature foreign policy achievement of Obama.

The deal reached after more than two years of tough negotiations was between Iran, US, UK, Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union.

The agreement aimed at ensuring that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful in return for the lifting of sanctions.