Trump claims he was ‘all set’ to assassinate Syrian leader Assad but was blocked by Mattis

Trump previously denied that he had sought plans to assassinate the Syrian president but reversed himself during Fox News interview

US policy for more than four decades has generally banned government involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders

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US President Donald Trump and for defence secretary James Mattis. Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:37pm, 15 Sep 2020Updated: 11:44pm, 15 Sep 2020

US President Donald Trump said he was set to assassinate Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2017, contradicting his earlier denial that he’d sought to kill him.

“I would have rather taken him out,” Trump said on Tuesday on Fox News. “I had him all set, Mattis didn’t want to do it.”

Trump said during the Fox interview that he doesn’t regret deciding against moving forward with the killing, but faulted former defence secretary James Mattis, whom he called “highly overrated” and a “bad person”. The former Pentagon chief, who left the administration in January 2019, has been critical of Trump.

“To me he was a terrible general; he was a bad leader,” Trump said of Mattis.

A book written by journalist Bob Woodward in 2018 said Trump urged Mattis to come up with a plan to kill Assad, but that the then-defence secretary didn’t go along with the president’s demands. The discussions about killing Assad, according to the book, came after a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017 that was blamed on the Syrian government.

US policy for more than four decades has generally banned government involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders.

The US launched cruise missiles at Syria in response to Assad’s chemical attack, but the targets were limited to military installations.

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