As far as I’m aware the US doesn’t even seem to have attempted this argument. They’ve stuck with the self-defense line arguing that an overwhelming attack was imminent and that there was no way to prevent it aside from assassinating Soleimani. All this while providing no evidence of an imminent attack and no compelling reason why killing Soleimani would prevent such an attack given Iran has many other generals.
scalpel or other precision cutting device that can reach upwards of 3100° C, which puts you squarely in the realm of either tungsten alloys, or one of a handful of super-high-refraction ceramics. Given that he can detect tungsten off-gassing at ~15 ppm, it would either have to be at high altitude or anodized to at least 5 ppm precision