US House Committee confirms Mike Pompeo ready to testify on Iran, Iraq policy

A Democrats-led US House of Representatives committee confirmed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has agreed to testify at a public hearing on Iran and Iraq policy. Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Eliot L. Engel said that a date for the hearing would be confirmed soon.

“I spoke with Secretary Pompeo today who has committed to appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee to testify at a hearing on Iran, Iraq, war powers, and related topics - separate from our annual budget hearing,” said Engel in a statement.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to take out Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani came under scrutiny on the criteria of ‘imminent threat’ after the officials kept shifting the definitions saying they didn’t know the precise details of the threat. Democrats and journalists have been repeatedly enquiring about the credible information on the ‘imminent threat’ posed by Soleimani that forced the Trump administration to order the killing. 

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'Imminent threat' information

Pompeo has reportedly been inconsistent with the threat information saying they were unaware of the exact date and time of the potential attack but Soleimani was plotting a broad, large-scale attack against American interests, and those attacks were imminent. Later, Trump even went on to say that it doesn’t really matter whether the slain Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was an imminent threat or not. 

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During a press briefing on January 10, Pompeo was asked whether the attack was planned against an embassy to which he replied it was planned against US facilities throughout the region including American embassies, military bases. A journalist even went on to ask Pompeo about his definition of ‘imminent’. The former CIA director said, “This was going to happen, and American lives were at risk...we would have been culpably negligent had we not recommended to the President that he take this action at Qasem Soleimani”.

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