Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted Wednesday that the U.S. was powerless to respond to Iran’s attacks against American contractors, soldiers, and diplomats: “You can’t do anything,” he taunted President Donald Trump.
By Thursday — Friday morning local time — U.S. forces had taken out Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq, thought to be behind recent attacks in Iraq, and responsible for hundreds of earlier American deaths in that country.
Trump had tweeted Wednesday, after an Iranian-backed militia stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, that Iran “will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities. They will pay a very BIG PRICE!”
He added: “This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”
But Khamenei dismissed the threat, as did Iranian military leaders. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leader Major General Hossein Salami, who said that “we are not worried.”
That may have contributed to security lapses Thursday, when a U.S. airstrike, at President Trump’s command, took out Soleimani and a local militia leader traveling with him.
Trump’s comment, via Twitter: a simple American flag.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.