US President Donald Trump has confirmed for the first time that he wanted to have the Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad killed as early as 2017. Only his then Defense Minister James Mattis opposed this plan, Trump told Fox News yesterday.
“I would have preferred to turn it off. I’ve had it this far, ”said Trump. „But Mattis didn’t want to do it.“ In the same breath he rated Mattis as a „highly overrated general“.
With this confession, Trump refuted his own statements on plans to assassinate Assad in 2019. At that time, Trump had vigorously contradicted a passage from a book by a reporter for the Washington Post about possible plans to attack the Syrian ruler. An attack was „not even discussed,“ said the US President at the time.
„Certainly not seen as a good person“
He does not regret that Assad was not attacked, Trump said in his conversation with Fox. But he “could have lived with it,” he added. „I certainly didn’t see him as a good person, but I could have turned him off if I wanted, but Mattis was against it.“ Mattis was „against most of the stuff“.
Trump recalled that after Mattis ’resignation in 2018, two leading extremists were killed in US attacks. The leader of the Islamic State terrorist militia, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, died in 2019, this year the Iranian general Kassem Soleimani was killed. „I switched off Soleimani, switched off Baghdadi,“ said Trump. „They were two of the biggest terrorists.“
