President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani a few days ago following a Hezbollah mob's attacks on the United States' embassy in Baghdad. Now that Soleimani is dead, we're learning that this isn't the first opportunity a nation has had to kill the Iranian terrorist.
According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials about Israel's plans and their close tracking of the military leader.
In January 2018, Trump administration gave Israel the go-ahead to kill Soleimani should they get the chance. According to a source who spoke to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida, "there is an American-Israeli agreement" that Soleimani is a "threat to the two countries' interests in the region."
It really isn't that surprising to learn that the Obama administration intervened to keep Soleimani alive. President Barack Obama never stood by Israel even though the country is considered the United States' greatest ally in the Middle East.
Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media noted an important tidbit about the revelation: "Yet the news that the Obama's administration prevented Israel from assassinating the Quds Force leader seems particularly significant, since the Obama administration also kept a list of approximately 500 American soldiers who were murdered by Iranian IEDs. Since the Quds Force spearheads Iran's operations outside the Islamic Republic, Soleimani would arguably be responsible for all of those deaths."
President Trump's response to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad is a stark contrast to President Obama's lack of response when a similar situation took place in Benghazi back in 2012.