In his first remarks on the US killing of Iran’s Qasem Soleimani 24 hours earlier, President Donald Trump today asserted the action was intended to avert a war, not start one. But Trump, like others in his administration, provided scant details to back up their claim that the United States had acted to disrupt an imminent attack on US facilities and diplomatic personnel in the region that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force chief was allegedly planning when he was killed in a precision US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport along with an Iraqi militia leader.

“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” Trump said in scripted remarks at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, before taking no questions.

“We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump continued. “We did not take action to start a war. I have deep respect for the Iranian people. … We do not seek regime change. However, the Iranian regime's aggression in the region, including the use of proxy fighters to destabilize its neighbors, must end, and it must end now.”

Congressional leaders briefed on the intelligence continued to raise questions and concerns about whether the Trump administration's Iran strategy was leading the nation into another unwanted war in the Middle East, while US allies who received a flurry of calls from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today called on all sides for restraint and urged de-escalation.