CIA Director Mike Pompeo said he sent a top Iranian general a letter warning the U.S. would hold Tehran responsible for any attacks the Islamic republic conducted against American interests in Iraq.
Pompeo said he sent the letter to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and elite Quds Force. However, he said the Iranian commander did not read it.
“I sent a note. I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten U.S. interests in Iraq,” Pompeo said at a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Simi Valley, California. “He refused to open the letter — didn’t break my heart to be honest with you.”
“What we were communicating to him in that letter was that we will hold he and Iran accountable … and we wanted to make sure that he and the leadership of Iran understood that in a way that was crystal clear.”
In Iran, Mohammad Mohammadi Golpaygani, the chief of staff for the country’s supreme leader, said Soleimani ignored the letter. “Recently, when … the CIA chief through one of his contacts in the region sent a letter to Gen. Soleimani, he responded by saying, ‘I did not either receive or read the letter. I have nothing to tell these people’,” Golpaygani said. [source]
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