Intel: Trump touts eliminating Soleimani, Baghdadi at State of the Union

President Donald Trump touted his removal of Iran’s Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the Iraqi and Syrian battlefields during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. 

“Soleimani was the Iranian regime’s most ruthless butcher, a monster who murdered or wounded thousands of American service members in Iraq,” said Trump. “As the world’s top terrorist, Soleimani orchestrated the deaths of countless men, women and children.”

Trump invited the wife and son of Army Staff Sgt. Christopher Hake — who was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad in 2008 — as his guests at the annual address. The president alleged that Soleimani had “provided the deadly roadside bomb that took Chris’ life.” He also outlined broad conditions for Iran to meet for the United States to lift sanctions, calling on Tehran to “abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, stop spreading terror, death and destruction and start working for the good of its own people,” while deriding Iranian leaders as “too proud or too foolish to ask” for US help.

The president also invited the parents of Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian aid worker executed in Syria by the Islamic State in 2013. Trump touted the territorial defeat of the IS caliphate, noting, “The bloodthirsty killer known as al-Baghdadi is dead.”