"We caught him in the act and terminated him," Trump said Friday, a day after the strike that assassinated Lieutenant General Soleimani and a number of other Iranian and Iraqi military officials.
Trump told reporters that the IRGC Quds Force commander should have been taken out by his predecessors.
He added, "His reign of terror is over."
Trump also claimed that the US was not seeking regime change in Iran.
The United States forces assassinated General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s pro-government Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) — better known as Hashd al-Sha’abi — in an attack at Baghdad’s international airport early on Friday. The Pentagon said in a statement that US President Donald Trump had ordered the attack.
General Soleimani was among the key figures in the fight against terrorism in Syria and Iraq in the past several years.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council said a harsh response "in due time and right place" awaits criminals behind Soleimani's assassination.
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