SAINT ANSELM COLLEGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Former Vice President Joe Biden said Friday at the eighth Democrat debate he would not have ordered the strike against Iranian terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani if he were president and his advisers advised him to do so.
“I would not have ordered that strike on Soleimani because there was no evidence of an imminent threat,” Biden said.
President Trump ordered the strike against Soleimani after he said there was intelligence showing that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks against U.S. targets in the Middle East.
It was also after Iran-backed Shia militia members killed an American contractor, injured four U.S. service members, and attacked the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
Trump administration officials also argued that Soleimani, as leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, oversaw the campaign against U.S. troops during the Iraq War that led to more than 600 U.S. deaths and many more wounded.
Biden also famously advised former President Barack Obama to strike al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
Meanwhile, other former Obama administration officials have praised President Trump’s decision to take out Soleimani, including former National Security Adviser Marine Gen. Jim Jones, who called it “absolutely correct”:
A recent ABC News-Washington Post poll showed that a slim majority of Americans also approved of Trump’s strike against Soleimani.
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