Trump Says Iranian Official He Ordered Killed Was ‘A Great Leader’

During a Friday address at the Future Investment Initiative in Miami, President Donald Trump said that Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian official whom he ordered to be killed in early 2020, was a “great leader.”

Soleimani was one of Iran’s most powerful military figures, serving as commander of the Quds Force, the overseas operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Trump ordered the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani near Baghdad International Airport in January 2020, a move that sharply escalated tensions between Washington and Tehran.

On Friday, speaking about his most recent military escalations in the region, Trump said, “It was a big moment, also in my first administration, when I took out Soleimani. And a lot of people think that might have been the biggest thing of all because he was a mad genius.”

“He was a vicious, horrible human being, but he was a great general and a great leader — if you define a leader in a certain way — a very powerful leader,” the president continued.

“In fact, he was so powerful that I really think that the leadership of Iran was extremely happy when I took him out, but they don’t say that. But nobody’s gonna be able to ask them anymore, because they’re not here either,” Trump concluded.

With the Iran conflict rounding out its fourth week, a growing number of GOP lawmakers are voicing unease over the prospect of a deeper U.S. military entanglement.

Of the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, one anonymous Republican congressman said to Politico that if Trump sends ground troops to the Middle Eastern country, “We lose 60 to 70 seats.”

Also per Politico, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), the “MAGA-aligned former Navy SEAL who served five wartime deployments,” said, “My biggest concern this whole time is that this would turn into another long Middle Eastern war… Though I don’t want to try and take away any of the president’s ability to carry out this operation, I know a lot of our supporters and a lot of members of Congress are very concerned.”

Watch the clip above via The White House on YouTube.

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