US strike on Iranian military leader sparks escalation fears

President Donald Trump authorized a US strike that killed the influential Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in Iraq early Friday morning, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Describing the move as a “decisive defensive action,” the Pentagon insisted that the strike was aimed at deterring Iran from launching future attacks after an Iraqi proxy group fired rockets at a US base in Kirkuk and Iran-backed demonstrators breached the US Embassy grounds in Baghdad.

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon said in a statement late Thursday, after Iraqi state television had already confirmed Soleimani’s death in a US-led drone strike.

Just hours earlier, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters that the United States had the authority to take preemptive strikes to defend American troops and diplomats against planned Iranian attacks. Reuters reported that Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units’ political wing and head of Khataib Hezbollah, an Iran-linked group, also died in the strike.