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The Decision to Kill Soleimani Was Reasonable and Defensible
(New York Daily News) Fred Kagan - The U.S. government has said it had evidence that Soleimani was in the midst of planning yet another attack against Americans in the region, and that is extremely likely. The entire pattern of U.S.-Iranian interaction in 2019 has been characterized by consistent Iranian military and paramilitary escalation that the U.S. has usually tried to stop with economic and defensive military deployments. Faced with the likelihood of yet another Iranian military attack, the decision to kill Soleimani was reasonable and defensible. It is easy to point to all the risks and criticize the decision to kill Soleimani. We must recognize, however, that Iran might well have chosen to undertake these escalatory actions even if the U.S. had done nothing or confined itself to sanctions and defensive deployments. That, after all, has largely been the pattern of 2019. The writer is the director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.