The US is ready to deploy more force in Iraq if needed to defend or prevent more attacks by Iranian-backed militias, Pentagon leaders warned on Thursday.
Any further attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad would be met with a "buzz saw," General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff added in a briefing at the Pentagon.
A rare direct US assault on an Iran-backed militia in Iraq and its response - an attack on the embassy before withdrawing Wednesday - threatened to spiral into a broader confrontation. The US and Iran are already facing off over the Trump administration's crippling economic campaign against Tehran and suspected Iranian reprisals, and additional American forces were ordered to the region after the embassy attack.
"There are some indications out there that they may be planning additional attacks. That's nothing new," Esper said. "If that happens, then we will act and, by the way, if we get word of an attack of some kind of indication, we would take pre-emptive action as well to protect American forces, American lives - the game has changed."
While President Donald Trump has called for withdrawing US troops from entanglements abroad, deployments have climbed in recent months to more than 60,000 in the region that stretches from Kuwait to Afghanistan. Esper said the public shouldn't see the dispatch this week of troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne "ready battalion" as portending a major increase in personnel.
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