The U.S. is prepared to take “preemptive” military action to prevent future attacks on U.S. forces, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday.

At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members …

Major General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), have been killed in US airstrikes in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Iran is pursuing a variety of methods in an effort to preserve its influence in Iraq and Lebanon in the face of protests against existing power structures.

The United States said on December 29 that it had bombed five targets in Iraq and Syria controlled by an Iraqi Shi’a paramilitary group with suspected ties to Iran’s elite Quds Force.

Following deadly U.S. airstrikes on five locations in Iraq and Syria belonging to the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah (commonly referred to as the Hezbollah Brigades, or KH), the Shia jihadist militia has threatened more attacks on U.S. troops in the region.

Protesters have stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to condemn recent U.S. air strikes that killed at least 25 members of an Iran-backed militant group, causing Iraqi security forces and compound guards to fire tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper has announced that the United States is sending additional troops to Baghdad to provide security for the American embassy there following an attack by protesters.