Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, has been killed in a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke with WGBH All Things Considered anchor Arun Rath about the assassination. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Arun Rath: My first question is a simple one: Is this assassination of an Iranian general an act of war?
Ed Markey: Well, I think that this assassination is a massive, deliberate, and dangerous escalation of conflict with Iran. President Trump has set aflame an already volatile region. He’s angered our strategic partner in Iraq and led some of our core U.S. allies, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, to urge restraint to avoid a full-blown conflict. So this has the potential of crossing very quickly into something that is very dangerous and will invoke the law of unintended consequences that could be tragic for American military and civilians, both in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.
Rath: Can you talk about what escalation with Iran could mean? Speaking for a lot of people in Massachusetts, people are kind of frightened right now about what comes next.
Markey: Iran has a very significant military capacity. They have a missile capacity, a weapons capacity, that is very sophisticated. They also have reach into multiple countries in the Middle East. But their sophistication also goes to an ability to perhaps perpetrate terrorist actions on the United States in our own homeland. So the potential threats from Iran are much more sophisticated than from a disorganized, more fractured group like al-Qaida is today. This is something that has great potential for doing harm on multiple fronts to our country and its interests.
Rath: Leaving aside the very big issue, obviously, of the threats and the repercussions - in terms of the morality of this act, the Trump administration says that Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, and we know that is true. General Petraeus has said that. And it’s not just in Iraq. He’s been on the other side of the U.S. in Syria, Lebanon, those places that you mentioned - pretty much everywhere Iran has a presence in the Middle East. The administration says that they have intelligence showing that he was plotting future attacks. So does all of that make a good case, morally, for assassination?
Markey: Well, the United States has sworn enemies across the world, but a president who is serious about national security would only act if and when doing so furthers the safety and security of Americans. We now know that Americans are endangered, because the State Department is urging all Americans to immediately depart Iraq after the airstrike. So, the questions we’re going to be asking are, were there any dissenting inter-agency viewpoints? What were the pros and cons to U.S. safety and security, according to our top officials? Where and how are Iran and its proxies likely to respond? And what is the United States doing to deter a lethal response? So from my perspective, all of these questions have yet to be answered. The president has yet to brief the United States Senate. And one of the things that we should be really concerned about is that this just triggers Iran going back to a full-scale nuclear weapons program that they had signed an agreement not to pursue at the end of the Obama administration. So we potentially could be crossing over into an area that is extremely dangerous, not only for the Middle East, but for the United States itself.
Rath: If somehow you had the ear and could advise the Trump administration going forward, now that this deed is done, now we have this situation, what do you think they should do?
Markey: I would say the administration has to find a way to de-escalate, beyond simply hoping that Iran will begin negotiating once again. Trump has to ensure U.S. personnel are protected worldwide, wherever they are at risk from Iran or Hezbollah or other proxies. And the administration, which spoke to China about the air strike before even briefing Congress, must immediately explain to Congress and the American people [briefing them] on the threat it was supposedly preventing, in terms of ongoing threats and on the Trump Administration’s diplomatic strategy going forward. All of those things have to be put in place and completed almost immediately.
Rath: Senator, before we let you go, I’d like to ask you quickly about your being barred from entering the Philippines for criticizing the human rights record of the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte. That includes his policy of summary execution for suspected drug dealers, among multiple other human rights concerns. How did you find out about your being banned?
Markey: Well, I was notified that I had been banned. My resolution passed the Senate Foreign Relations in December, which highlighted the cases of Senator Leila de Lima and journalist Maria Ressa, the founder of the online news platform Rappler in the Philippines. The Duterte government has wrongfully imprisoned Senator Dilemma for more than a thousand days and has repeatedly jailed Ms. Ressa in response to their work to expose extrajudicial killings and other abuses by the Filipino security forces as part of their so-called war on drugs. So my resolution passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a result, I have now been placed on a travel ban by Duterte from ever coming to the Philippines. But President Duterte is sorely mistaken if he thinks he can silence my voice and that of my colleagues. He has already failed to silence Senator de Lima, Maria Ressa and others in his country who have spoken truth to power, and my goal is going to be to heighten even further the focus, the spotlight, that is put on these cases, on these two women especially, who are real heroes in the Philippines. We should be giving them all of their support. So in a way, it’s an honor that President Duterte is banning me from going to the Philippines, because it shows that we’re making a difference by having my resolution passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
