US President Donald Trump claimed on Friday that Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “and all of the people in Iran were happy about" the US elimination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani "because they were afraid of him too."
His comments came during an address before the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
Soleimani was eliminated in a US drone attack in Iraq, on January 3, 2020, during Trump’s first term in office.
Trump said in his remarks that Israel was supposed to eliminate Soleimani together with the US but backed out the night before the attack.
“And I said to a couple of generals that we had who were very good, I said, ’What do you think, generals, can we do it?’ Because we worked on it for 30 days, worked on it with Israel. They said, ‘We'll do it, sir…we'll do it better. And he was dead the next day."
Trump commented on the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the US and Iran last week, labeling it “historic" and adding that it accomplished “what no president has ever been able to accomplish before, that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to let that happen. And thanks to the power and skill of the United States Armed Forces, Iran today has no Navy, no Air Force, no anti-aircraft capability, no radar, virtually no manufacturing. Their drone capacity has been cut by 82 percent. Their missile capacity has been cut by 80 percent. Their rocket launchers have been cut by 90 percent."
Trump also denounced the 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed during the Obama administration and which Trump pulled out of during his first term in office.
Labelling former President Barack Obama “a disaster", Trump continued, “He gave [Iran] $1.7 billion in cash. Gave it to Iran. Thought he could buy their friendship. And it was just the opposite. They used the money, and they built missiles and everything else. And I terminated the JCPOA, which was his agreement. It was the Iran nuclear deal. It was a disaster."
He further stated that if he had not terminated the Obama-era deal, “Iran would have had a nuclear weapon. If I didn't send the B-2 bombers in 10 months ago, they would have had a nuclear weapon. We obliterated that nuclear dust. And then you wouldn't have Israel. Israel would be gone."
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)