The United States killed Iran Revolutionary Guards Quds chief Qasem Soleimani to halt Iranian plans to blow up the US Embassy in Baghdad, President Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday.
"We caught a total monster and we took him out and that should have happened a long time ago. We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy," Trump said.
Speaking further, the American president announced that the US has put a new round of anti-Iran sanction in effect.
"It's already been done. We've increased them. They were very severe, but now it's increased substantially," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I just approved it a little while ago with Treasury."
Tensions between the US and Iran spiked earlier in the week after Tehran targeted the American military at the Ayn al-Asad Air Base and a facility in Erbil in Iraq in response to the assassination of the IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike.
A day after the attack the US president made no mention of an imminent military response to Iran’s missile strikes, pledging a fresh wave of sanctions instead and offering a diplomatic option to defuse regional tensions in his highly-anticipated address.