While President Trump had just killed one of Iran’s top leaders, he spent his first day back in Washington after two weeks in Mar-a-Lago in a business-as-usual posture — but with no public events
It was supposed to be a month of shrugging off impeachment and starting to pivot toward the 2020 election.
Trump’s top aides were met Monday with stark reminders of the new risks facing the administration in the new year: enhanced security measures across the White House including additional Secret Service agents, tighter security at entrances and greater scrutiny of visitors. A senior Pentagon official said the administration has “increased our force posture throughout CENTCOM.” A member of Iran’s parliament even said Iran could attack the White House itself,Senior administration officials also have been told to be on the lookout for cyberattacks that often arrive in inboxes as suspicious emails, one of those officials said.
The bigger challenge now for the White House is answering tough questions from lawmakers and foreign policy hands about why the government opted to kill the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani at this particular moment – as well as Trump’s plan for handling Iran’s potential retaliation. Soleimani was killed in a drone strike at the Baghdad airport early Friday Iraqi time after American officials determined he was planning attacks in the near future on Americans in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
“Right now, we’re in the process of waiting to be struck by a country that, from a conventional military point of view is not very capable compared to us, but they’re very capable in the cyber world,” a former White House official said. “They’re very capable in terms of terrorism. They’ve got cells heavily represented in places like Africa, the Middle East and Europe but Latin America as well.”
The senior Pentagon official characterized the strike against the No. 2 in Iran as a culmination of recent events.
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