The United States is sending nearly 3,000 additional troops to the Middle East from the 82nd Airborne Division as a precaution amid rising threats to American forces in the region, US officials said on Friday.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the troops would be joining the roughly 750 forces that were sent to the region earlier this week.
US officials told Reuters earlier this week that thousands of additional troops could be sent to the region and had been told to prepare to deploy.
Their remarks came after Iran promised vengeance following a US airstrike in Baghdad on Friday that killed Qassem Soleimani, Tehran's most prominent military commander and the architect of its growing influence in the Middle East.
Soleimani, a 62-year-old general who headed the Quds Force, was regarded as the second most powerful figure in Iran after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strike aimed to disrupt an "imminent attack" that would have endangered Americans in the Middle East.
Pompeo, in interviews on Fox News and CNN, said it was "an intelligence based assessment" that drove the decision to target Soleimani.
