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A Sea of Mourners in Iran, and New Threats From Both Sides Outrage in Iran After Killing of Suleimani: Here’s What You Need to Know
(about 1 hour later)
Iran’s government said it was no longer abiding by a commitment it made under the 2015 nuclear deal and it would not limit its enrichment of uranium.
The latest breaking news and analysis about the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani can be found here. The decision to lift all restrictions on the production of nuclear fuel meant the effective end of the nuclear deal, experts said, though Iran left open the possibility that it will return to the limits if sanctions are lifted.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept and offered prayers over the coffin of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani at the funeral in Tehran on Monday, as throngs of people filled the city’s streets to mourn.
General Suleimani was killed by the United States on Friday in Baghdad in a drone strike. American officials said the general had ordered assaults on Americans in Iraq and Syria and was planning a wave of imminent attacks.
Ayatollah Khamenei had a close relationship with the general, who was widely considered to be the second most powerful man in Iran.
The military commander was hailed as a martyr, and his successor swore revenge during the funeral ceremony, while chants of “Death to America” rang out from the crowds in the capital.
State-run news outlets reported that millions had gathered in Tehran, and images showed a sea of mourners, many wearing black and waving the Iranian flag.
“God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger,” said Esmail Ghaani, the Iranian general who will succeed General Suleimani as head of the Quds Force, the foreign expeditionary arm of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Certainly actions will be taken,” he added.
General Suleimani’s killing has prompted fears of escalating retaliatory actions between Iran and the United States, and of a broader regional conflict. After the attack, Iran said it would no longer abide by a 2015 agreement to suspend uranium production.
Mr. Khamenei has told advisers that any retaliation against American interests must be direct, proportional and carried out openly by Iran — a departure from the country’s usual policy of acting through proxies. He laid down those parameters at a meeting of Iran’s National Security Council hours after the general was killed, according to three Iranians familiar with the meeting.
Zeinab Suleimani, General Suleimani’s daughter, said at the funeral that the United States and Israel faced a “dark day.”
“You crazy Trump, the symbol of ignorance, the slave of Zionists, don’t think that the killing of my father will finish everything,” she said.
The general’s funeral was attended by a broad swath of Iranians, including reformers who oppose the government of President Hassan Rouhani but who perceived the killing as an attack on all of Iran.
“I felt like he was our safety umbrella spread above Iran,” said Amir Ali, 22, a university student, of General Suleimani. “I felt safe knowing he was out there.”
An official letter from the Defense Department informing Iraq that American troops were “repositioning forces” for “movement out of Iraq” produced headlines around the world that an American withdrawal had begun.
But the letter, drafted by the United States military command in Baghdad, was sent out by mistake. The furor it caused prompted Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, to call an urgent news conference to deny the reports.
“It was an honest mistake,” General Milley told reporters at the Pentagon. “That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released.”
“There’s been no decision made to leave Iraq, period,” Mr. Esper said. “There is no decision to leave, nor did we issue any plans to leave.”
But because the Iraqi Parliament voted on Sunday that American troops should leave the country, General Milley said, military officials have begun making arrangements for a withdrawal in the event that a decision is made to pull out.
He said the military was “moving forces around” to consolidate their positions and that, not only were they not withdrawing, but at the moment more forces were arriving from Kuwait.
The Iraqi government has begun to consider new parameters for the American military in Iraq after lawmakers voted 170-0 on Sunday in favor of expelling United States troops from their country.
The troops will be limited to “training and advising” Iraqi forces, but will not be allowed to move off their bases or to fly in Iraqi airspace while plans are being made for their departure, said Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, the military spokesman for Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
The vote on Sunday was not final and many lawmakers did not attend the session. But Mr. Mahdi drafted the language and submitted the bill to Parliament, leaving little doubt about his support for the expulsion.
Mr. Mahdi met with Matthew Tueller, the American ambassador to Iraq, on Monday, and “stressed the need for joint action to implement the withdrawal,” according to a statement and photo released by Mr. Mahdi’s office. He also emphasized Iraq’s efforts to prevent the current tensions between Iran and the United States from sliding into “open war.”
Mr. Mahdi also made clear that Iraq wanted good relations with “all countries” but that Iraq wanted those relationships to be based on “mutual respect, and preserving its security, stability and national sovereignty.”
The drone strike that killed General Suleimani on Friday also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
The attack was viewed by many in Iraq as a violation of the nation’s sovereignty, and the Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that it had summoned the American ambassador. Iran reacted to Sunday’s vote with congratulatory messages.
But the Iraqi Parliament was divided over the demands from angry citizens to expel American troops. Nearly half of its members, primarily Kurds and Sunnis, did not attend Sunday’s session and did not vote. In his speech to lawmakers, Mr. Mahdi laid out two possibilities: to either quickly end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, or to set a timeline for their expulsion.
The measure approved by Parliament did not include a timeline, and only instructed the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq. Officials said no decision had been made about whether any American troops would be able to stay, or under what conditions.
By Monday, there was still no timetable for the troops’ departure and no specifics about whether all American forces would be asked to leave or only some. And while Mr. Mahdi’s rhetoric was tough in his speech to the Iraqi Parliament on Sunday, by late in the evening, after speaking with President Emmanuel Macron of France by phone, his language was more modulated.
In a post on Twitter describing their phone call, Mr. Mahdi suggested that he was leaving the door open to something less than a complete departure.
He said he had agreed with Mr. Macron to “continue to discuss this delicate issue.”
He added that they talked about “the withdrawal of the foreign forces from Iraq in a way that would not damage the battle against ISIS and would preserve the sovereignty of Iraq and keep its relationships with the countries of the international coalition” that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq.
Those goals would be difficult to achieve without some continued presence by the United States, because other countries’ troops are unlikely to stay in the absence of American military support.
President Trump and other American officials have said that General Suleimani was in the midst of planning attacks on United States forces when he was killed. But the general may have also been working as a go-between in quiet efforts to reduce the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Hostility and competition for influence had grown for years between the two regional rivals, but in recent months, Iran and Saudi Arabia had taken steps toward indirect talks to defuse the situation.
In an address to the Iraqi Parliament on Sunday, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq said that he was supposed to meet with General Suleimani on the morning he was killed.
“It was expected that he was carrying a message for me from the Iranian side responding to the Saudi message that we had sent to the Iranian side to reach agreements and breakthroughs important for the situation in Iraq and the region,” Mr. Mahdi said.
The content of the messages was not immediately clear, but Mr. Mahdi’s comments suggested that the drone strike ordered by Mr. Trump may have interrupted a diplomatic back channel aimed at averting conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Esper acknowledged that striking Iranian cultural sites with no military value would be a war crime, putting him at odds with the president, who insisted such places would be legitimate targets. Mr. Trump’s threats generated condemnation at home and abroad while deeply discomfiting American military leaders who have made a career of upholding the laws of war.
“We will follow the laws of armed conflict,” the defense secretary said at a news briefing at the Pentagon on Monday when asked if cultural sites would be targeted, as the president had suggested over the weekend. When a reporter asked if that meant “no” because the laws of war prohibit targeting cultural sites, Mr. Esper agreed. “That’s the laws of armed conflict.”
The furor over the threat to Iranian antiquities was a classic controversy of Mr. Trump’s own creation, the apparent result of an impulsive threat and his refusal to back down in the face of criticism. While Mr. Trump declared on Saturday that the United States had identified 52 potential targets in Iran, none of them qualified as cultural sites, according to an administration official who asked not to be identified correcting the president.
Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of Unesco, met with the Iranian ambassador to the organization on Monday to discuss the current situation, and issued a statement pointing to international agreements that condemn acts of destruction of cultural heritage.
“Ms. Azoulay stressed the universality of cultural and natural heritage as vectors of peace and dialogue between peoples, which the international community has a duty to protect and preserve for future generations,” Unesco said in the statement.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, were once seen as relative moderates.
Mr. Rouhani, for example, once advocated diplomacy and integration with the West. Mr. Zarif was the Iranian most closely associated with the negotiation of the 2015 deal that limited Iran’s nuclear program.
But on Monday, each offered a fiery response to the United States in light of General Suleimani’s killing.
“What the US has accomplished in its terrorist assassination of anti-ISIS heroes is to unleash global anti-US fury and a worldwide rancor — on a scale not seen in recent memory,” Mr. Zarif said in a tweet. “End of malign U.S. presence in West Asia has begun.”
Mr. Rouhani said in a tweet on Monday that “those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290,” in a reference to the number of people killed when an Iranian passenger plane was shot down by an American warship in the Persian Gulf in 1988.
The comparison suggested that if Mr. Trump planned to attack 52 targets, one for each American hostage held by Iran in the American embassy from 1979 to 1980, Iran had an even larger number of victims to commemorate.
“Never threaten the Iranian nation,” Mr. Rouhani said.
Two top Senate Democrats urged Mr. Trump early Monday to declassify the document that the administration sent to Congress formally giving notice of the airstrike that killed General Suleimani. It is unusual for an administration to classify the entirety of such a notification, and Democrats upbraided the document as insufficient. The notification to Congress is required by law.
In a joint statement, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said it was “critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner.”
“An entirely classified notification is simply not appropriate in a democratic society, and there appears to be no legitimate justification for classifying this notification,” they said.
The House is expected to vote later this week on a resolution invoking the War Powers Act that would curtail the president’s ability to authorize a strike against Iran without Congress’s approval. The Senate could vote on similar legislation as soon as mid-January.
“He was designated a terrorist by President Obama and then Obama did nothing about it except give them $150 billion,” Mr. Trump said Monday during a phone interview on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, referring to Iranian money that was unfrozen as part of the nuclear agreement that President Barack Obama’s administration brokered in 2015.
“The Obama administration was just letting them get away with murder — in the true sense, murder,” Mr. Trump continued.
He did not spare his Republican predecessor either, holding him responsible for not targeting General Suleimani during his administration. “President Bush should have taken him out,” Mr. Trump added. “He’s responsible for the” roadside bombs that killed many American troops during the height of the Iraq War.
The general’s killing has won Mr. Trump praise from some neoconservatives who have been critical of him, and who have advocated military action against Iran for years.
Saudi Arabia is scrambling to ease tensions in the Middle East amid fears that Iran could retaliate for the killing of General Suleimani with strikes against Riyadh and other American allies in the region.
Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, sent his younger brother, Deputy Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, to Washington, where on Monday he met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and with Mr. Esper. The Saudi news media had reported that he would urge the Americans to exercise restraint.
“We are very keen that the situation in the region doesn’t escalate any further,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told reporters in Riyadh on Monday. “It’s certainly a very dangerous moment, and we have to be conscious of the risks and dangers, not just to the region but to wider global security, and therefore we hope that all actors take all the steps necessary to prevent any further escalation and any provocation.”
While the Saudi leadership considers Iran its staunchest regional enemy, a drone and missile attack on Saudi oil processing plants in September that the United States accused Iran of orchestrating exposed the kingdom’s vulnerability — and raised questions about Mr. Trump’s willingness to defend it.
The United States Embassy in Riyadh this week warned Americans in the kingdom of “the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks,” adding that Americans working near military bases and oil facilities were “at heightened risk of attack.”
The Iranian government said it would no longer abide by a commitment it made under a 2015 nuclear deal that limited its enrichment of uranium.
The decision to lift all restrictions on the production of nuclear fuel spelled the effective end of the nuclear deal, experts said, though Iran left open the possibility that it would return to the limits if sanctions were lifted.
“It’s finished. If there’s no limitation on production, then there is no deal,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit in Washington.“It’s finished. If there’s no limitation on production, then there is no deal,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit in Washington.
The announcement came after the Iranian Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting on Sunday after General Suleimani’s assassination. The announcement came after Iran’s National Security Council held an emergency meeting on Sunday to discuss the country’s nuclear policy in the aftermath of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani’s assassination.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges,” the government said in a statement. “Therefore Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.” The statement said: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuges. Therefore Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.”
The announcement followed several steps by Iran to move away from the terms of the agreement, nearly two years after Mr. Trump withdrew the United States. The other parties to the deal included Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. But the government said Iran would continue its cooperation with International Atomic Agency.
None except the United States have left the agreement, which was a key foreign policy achievement of former Mr. Obama. Since that renunciation, the Trump administration has imposed severe sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s economy. The announcement followed several steps by Iran to move away from the terms of the agreement, nearly two years after President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal. Since that renunciation, the Trump administration has imposed severe sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s economy.
The nuclear agreement ended some economic sanctions on Iran in return for its verifiable pledge to use nuclear power peacefully. The nuclear agreement had ended many economic sanctions on Iran in return for its verifiable pledge to use nuclear power peacefully. The European parties to the deal, including Britain, France and Germany, had struggled to preserve the agreement amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Iran’s statement on Sunday did not include details about its enrichment ambitions. And the country did not say that it was expelling the inspectors who monitor its nuclear program. Iran’s statement Sunday did not include details about its enrichment ambitions. And the country did not say it was expelling the inspectors who monitor its nuclear program. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted:
Mr. Trump seemed to respond to the announcement on Monday with an all-caps post on Twitter: Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert on Iran and associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote on Twitter that the announcement was “ambiguous,” with room for “both negotiation and escalation.”
A senior adviser to Mr. Trump on Monday said that the president held open the possibility of renegotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. “War crime,” said Iran’s foreign minister.
“He said he’s open to meet if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country,” Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s White House counselor, told reporters. “It doesn’t work that way,” replied President Trump.
The European parties to the deal, including Britain, France and Germany, as well as China and Russia, also signatories to the deal, had struggled to preserve the agreement as tensions between the United States and Iran worsened. Earlier in the day, the American president, taking to Twitter, had warned Iran against retaliating for the killing of General Soleimani. He said the United States had already picked out targets to hit in Iran if it did, including cultural sites.
Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a daily news briefing that there was still hope for the nuclear deal. He noted that Tehran had said it would continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iranian activities under the agreement, and that it could return to the pact under the right conditions. “Like ISIS, Like Hitler, Like Genghis!” Iran’s information and telecommunications minister declared on Twitter. ”They all hate cultures. Trump is a terrorist in a suit."
“We believe that although Iran has been compelled to reduce adherence owing to external factors, it has also demonstrated restraint,” Mr. Geng said. The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that “targeting cultural sites is a war crime.”
In a joint statement on Sunday night, Britain, France and Germany called on Iran to refrain from violence and to return to “full compliance with its commitments” under the 2015 nuclear agreement, which Tehran has seemed to all but have abandoned. But on Sunday evening, aboard Air Force One on his way back from his holiday trip to Florida, Mr. Trump did not back down.
The statement followed Iran’s announcement that day that it would no longer abide by the limits to uranium enrichment set out in the deal, a move that seemed to finally kill off the agreement after months during which Tehran had carefully breached less significant limits. “They’re allowed to kill our people,” he said to reporters. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”
Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal in 2018. Iraqi lawmakers voted 170-0 on Sunday in favor of expelling American troops from their country, just days after a United States drone strike killed the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force on Iraqi soil.
The European statement seemed somewhat forlorn, since its efforts to preserve the deal have been weak, hamstrung in part by a desire to maintain good relations with Washington. The statement did not support the drone strike on the Iranian general but did acknowledge American concerns, saying that, “we have condemned the recent attacks’’ on coalition forces in Iraq and “are gravely concerned by the negative role played by Iran in the region.’’ The vote was not final and many lawmakers did not attend the session. But Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi drafted the language and submitted the bill to Parliament, leaving little doubt about his support.
The statement called for “de-escalation” of tensions from all parties and reaffirmed the Europeans’ determination “to continuing the fight against Islamic State, which remains a priority.’’ And it called on Iraq “to continue to supply the necessary support to the coalition’’ — in other words, to not expel American and NATO troops. The drone strike that killed the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, at the Baghdad airport on Friday also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias.
The secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, called an emergency meeting of the alliance’s advisers on Monday afternoon. During a news conference following the meeting Mr. Stoltenberg said NATO would be suspending training operations on the ground in Iraq. The attack was viewed in Iraq as a violation of the nation’s sovereignty, and the country’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that it had summoned the American ambassador in Baghdad.
“At our meeting today, Allies expressed their strong support for the fight against ISIS and for the NATO mission in Iraq,” he said. “In everything that we do, the safety of our personnel is paramount. As such, we have temporarily suspended our training on the ground.” Iraq’s Parliament was divided over demands from angry citizens to expel American troops. Many of its 328 members, primarily Kurds and Sunnis, did not attend Sunday’s session and did not vote. In his speech to lawmakers, Mr. Mahdi laid out two possibilities: to either quickly end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, or to set a timeline for that expulsion.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union foreign policy chief, posted on Twitter that while the bloc regretted Iran’s announcement on the deal, it would wait for independent verification from the international nuclear monitoring group to determine what actions would be taken. The measure approved by the Parliament did not include a timeline, and only instructed the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq. Officials said no decision had been made about whether any American troops would be able to stay, or under what conditions.
Peter Stano, his spokesman, said during a news briefing in Brussels said that de-escalation was the goal. Iranian officials reacted to the vote with congratulatory messages and said General Soleimani’s death had delivered a huge victory over the United States.
“It’s in our interest as Europeans to maintain this agreement,” Mr. Stano said. Hesameddin Ashena, a top adviser to President Hassan Rouhani, in a Twitter post, said: “Expanding friendship with our neighbors and domestic unity are the best gifts for protecting our national security. America and Israel are the only winners of a rift between neighbors.”
On Monday, Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, said that the Europeans would talk to Iran and planned to come up with a coordinated response. Asked about the vote on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States would continue to battle the Islamic State. “It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what it is they deserve and continue our mission there to take down terrorism from ISIS and others in the region,” he said in an interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”
“This could be the first step toward the end of this agreement, which would be a great loss,” Mr. Maas told a German radio station. “And so we will weigh things up very, very responsibly.” If American forces leave the country, European Union and coalition forces will likely have to follow, because they rely on the American logistics and intelligence resources to protect their forces and the civilians that work with them. NATO has already announced the suspension of its training mission for Iraqi forces.
Russian officials have been sharply critical of the targeted killing in Iraq but have not otherwise intimated how the Kremlin might respond, or whether Moscow, which has longstanding ties with Tehran, might play a mediating role. From Israel to Saudi Arabia, the United States’ allies in the Middle East have long warned Washington about Iran’s campaigns in the region — many of them masterminded by General Suleimani.
President Vladimir V. Putin invited Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to visit Moscow on Saturday to discuss the strike, among other issues, the Kremlin announced. But with scant exception, their response to his killing has been silence.
Oil prices surged and stock markets in Asia fell on Monday morning, as the impact of General Suleimani’s death ricocheted around the world. Iran has built close ties with the government of Syria and armed groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. That puts many Iranian partners within firing range of American allies like Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The price of Brent oil, the international benchmark, jumped above $70 in futures trading as markets digested a steady flow of news over the weekend. It fell back below that level, to $69.92 a barrel, when markets opened in Europe, though the price was still about 5 percent higher than before the killing last week. For many of them, the wisest course of action over the weekend seemed to be to say nothing.
The sudden escalation in tensions in a region that supplies much of the world’s petroleum has roiled oil markets. The West Texas Intermediate, the American oil benchmark, rose 1.9 percent to $64.22 a barrel in futures trading. “Saudi Arabia and all the gulf countries are just quiet,” said Khalid al-Dakhil, a political sociologist in Saudi Arabia. “They don’t want to antagonize the Iranians, because the situation in the region is so delicate, so divided, so sensitive, that you don’t want to stir it up further.”
Analysts at Capital Economics have warned that the price of oil could spike to $150 a barrel if the bellicose rhetoric between the two countries turned into action. The spread of Iran’s network means that it could rely on allied forces to strike — for instance at Saudi oil facilities, just across the Persian Gulf — while giving Tehran a way to deny responsibility.
“The price of oil would soar in the event of full-blown military conflict in the Middle East,” said Alexander Kozul-Wright, a commodities economist at Capital Economics. And many officials in the Middle East are concerned about the degree of support they can expect from Mr. Trump should they become targets of Iranian retaliation, cyberattack or sabotage. Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi deputy defense minister, flew to Washington this weekend to meet with American officials.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, fresh from winning a mandate to take Britain out of the European Union, faces a particularly vexing challenge in dealing with the escalation between the United States and Iran. In Iraq, pro-Iranian militias pose a powerful threat to groups that prefer the United States.
In the first foreign policy crisis of the post-Brexit era, London is caught between its traditional alliance with Washington — one that Mr. Johnson wants to deepen further with a trade agreement — and the new relationship with Europe. In Lebanon, American allies kept quiet to avoid Hezbollah, a major political party and the country’s strongest military force.
In his first statement on Mr. Trump’s decision to strike the general, Mr. Johnson took pains to emphasize the threat posed by the Iranian military leader and said, “We will not lament his death.” But Mr. Johnson also called on all sides to avoid aggravating the situation, echoing the language used by the French and German governments. And even in Israel, celebrations were muted, with officials wanting to avoid any suggestion of involvement in the killing.
Mr. Johnson suggested he wanted to play a mediating role and noted that he had spoken to Mr. Trump, as well as to Mr. Macron of France and Ms. Merkel of Germany. The European governments have been more circumspect in their reactions to the American strike, with the Germans criticizing Mr. Trump’s threat to impose sanctions on Iraq if Baghdad were to expel American troops from bases in the country. “The entire region is on edge, as we are in unchartered territory,” said Taufiq Rahim, a senior fellow at the foundation New America who works in the Persian Gulf. “There is no way to be ready for what comes next, because anything could be a target.”
Mr. Johnson was said to be upset that Mr. Trump had not notified him of the strike in advance, but he can ill afford a falling out with the president, given Britain’s need to initiate trade talks with Washington The American-led coalition in Iraq and Syria said on Sunday that it was pausing its yearslong mission of attacking the Islamic State and training local forces in both countries as United States forces braced for retaliation from Iran over the killing of its top military commander.
The United States Embassy in Israel said in a security alert on Monday that tension in the Middle East could result in rocket attacks or other dangerous situations for Americans who are abroad. A statement from the American command pointed to recent attacks on Iraqi and American bases, one of which killed an American contractor last month. “We have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review,” it said of the fight against ISIS.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the Embassy strongly encourages U.S. citizens to remain vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness, as security incidents, including rocket fire, often take place without warning,” the embassy said. After the killing last week of the commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani — who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of troops over the years — the approximately 5,200 troops in Iraq and several hundred in Syria are focused on fortifying their outposts.
The embassy said people should keep a low profile, be aware of their surroundings and monitor local media, among other suggestions. The assassination of General Suleimani removed the leader of one of the Islamic State’s most effective opponents. He had been responsible for building up the alliance of Iran-backed militias that played a significant role in driving the militants out of their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, said in a statement on Monday that “Geopolitical tensions are at their highest level this century.” Also on Sunday, Islamic State militants attacked Iraqi security forces near the northern city of Kirkuk, killing two Iraqi soldiers and injuring another, the Iraqi Joint Command said.
“Even nuclear nonproliferation can no longer be taken for granted,” he said. “This caldron of tensions is leading more and more countries to take unpredicted decisions with unpredictable consequences and a profound risk of miscalculation.”He said he was urging world leaders to stop the escalation. Echoing President Trump’s remarks the day before, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned on Sunday that the United States could attack Iran itself if leaders there took hostile actions against American interests in the aftermath of the drone strike that killed a top general.
A United States government website was hacked over the weekend to display messages vowing revenge for General Suleimani’s death and a doctored photograph of Mr. Trump being punched in the jaw. “I’ve been part of the discussion and planning process — everything I’ve seen about how we will respond with great force and great vigor if the Iranian leadership makes a bad decision,” Mr. Pompeo said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We hope that they won’t, but when they do, America will respond.”
It was not immediately clear if the attack on the website of the Federal Depository Library Program had come from Iran. But the intrusion was consistent with the work of low-level Iranian hackers who could be acting independently, experts said. In appearances on five television news shows on Sunday morning, Mr. Pompeo underscored Mr. Trump’s message the previous day that the United States had chosen sites to attack within Iran if Tehran ordered assaults on American assets or citizens in retaliation for a drone strike that killed General Suleimani in Baghdad.
A security analysis by United States officials found that “none of the site’s data was compromised.” He tweeted on Saturday that the United States had pinpointed 52 targets in Iran if it retaliated for the killing, prompting Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to say on Twitter that “targeting cultural sites is a war crime.”
James A. Lewis, a former government official and cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said hackers probably targeted the first agency they could find “that had weak security.” Mr. Zarif added, “whether kicking or screaming, end of U.S. malign presence in West Asia has begun.”
He said the hack was probably not conducted by Iran’s more sophisticated team but instead recalled a “low-budget hack of the sort Iran’s ‘patriot hackers’ are known for, including the cheesy imagery.” Mr. Trump said on Sunday that “media posts” would serve as notification to Congress about a potential strike.
Bigger agencies have better defenses and are likely to be safe, Mr. Lewis said. Mr. Pompeo also blamed the 2015 nuclear deal for the rising hostilities. He told CNN that “this war kicked off” when the Obama administration entered into the agreement. Though Tehran had been abiding by the terms of the deal, Mr. Pompeo said, the agreement gave Iran “free rein” to expand its regional activities.
Reporting was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin, Ben Hubbard, Russell Goldman, Alexandra Stevenson, Farnaz Fassihi, Christopher Buckley, Megan Specia, Steven Erlanger, Melissa Eddy, Mark Landler, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Eric Schmitt, Vivian Yee, David D. Kirkpatrick, Catie Edmondson, Andrew Kramer, Edward Wong, Mihir Zaveri, Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman and Eileen Sullivan. In protest over that latest threat, Iran on Sunday summoned the Swiss envoy representing American interests in Tehran, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners poured into the streets of Iran to pay their respects to Maj. General Qassim Suleimani on Sunday, one day after joint funerals were held in Baghdad for the slain Quds Force leader and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a powerful militia leader in Iraq and a close adviser to the general.
Both men were killed by an American drone strike early Friday at Baghdad’s airport, inflaming tensions between Washington and Tehran and raising fears that more violence would follow.
President Trump said he had ordered the airstrikes not just as retaliation for past attacks on Americans, but also to prevent “imminent and sinister attacks” on more Americans. But Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Hassan Rouhani, both promised that the country would take “revenge” for the killing.
Iraq’s most influential Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent a letter of condolence to Iran’s supreme leader that praised General Soleimani for helping fight the Islamic State and stabilize Iraq over the past decade.
Iran’s regional reach was visible during the services in Baghdad, which were as close to a state ceremony in Iraq as any since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Many mourners were members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, militias that came together to fight the Islamic State — and the most powerful of which are affiliated with Iran.
Tens of thousands of pro-Iranian fighters marched through Baghdad, waving flags and chanting that “revenge is coming” to the United States.
“The worst thing that happened to Iran in the recent months was not the killing of General Suleimani but the turning of the Iraqi Shia against Iran before he was killed,” said Abbas Kadhim, the head of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council, referring to recent protests against Iranian influence. “That was reversed by the killing of Suleimani.”
Mr. Kadhim said that while Iran could afford the loss of a general or a politician, they could not afford “the turning of the Shia in neighboring countries against them.”
“That’s why this show of support for Iran in the holy cities, in Lebanon and Iraq after the killing of Suleimani is a huge victory,” he said. “They regained the most important element of their strategy in the region, which is the support of local populations.”
Mr. al-Muhandis, one of Iran’s top lieutenants in Iraq, was accused of playing a role in embassy bombings in Kuwait in the 1980s and funneling weapons to pro-Iranian militias in the 2000s. Many Iraqis saw him as a hero for his role in the battle against the Islamic State.
The leader of Hezbollah, the Islamist movement backed by Iran, warned in a speech Sunday that the killing of General Suleimani would only motivate Iran’s allies in the Middle East to strike harder against the United States and Israel.
“Assassinating General Suleimani means targeting the entire axis of resistance,” said the militant leader, Hassan Nasrallah, speaking via video feed at a memorial service. “The United States will leave our region humiliated. When U.S. troops leave the region in coffins, Washington will realize it has lost, and Trump will realize that he has lost the election.”
Mr. Nasrallah vowed to target American bases, soldiers and Marines — a response he called “retribution, a fair one” — but took care to add that he was “not talking about the American people at all.”
Hezbollah, a militia and political party based in Lebanon, is perhaps the most formidable of the network of proxy forces Iran has built up around the Middle East, which also includes pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.
The State Department has classified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and the militia has battled and skirmished repeatedly with Israel. It maintained close ties with General Suleimani, and was now mourning him as a hero over the weekend
Mr. Nasrallah said that he had met with the general on Wednesday in Beirut, where General Suleimani had stopped before flying to Baghdad. The group released what appeared to be a photo of the two men meeting.
On Sunday, Mr. Nasrallah said that the general’s death marked “the start of a new stage, not just for Iraq or Iran, but for the entire region” — a stage he warned would be awash in anti-American violence.
As the United States has escalated its conflict with Iran, many in the generation of Americans who have grown up since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have become alarmed by the prospect of being swept up in an extended conflict.
Over high school lunch tables, teenagers speak of World War III. When they get home, they tearfully ask their parents whether they could be drafted. Social media feeds have exploded with predictions of military action and wisecracking memes about end times.
With an all-volunteer military fighting the wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East that have been simmering since they were toddlers, many young men had grown used to thinking of the longstanding requirement that they register for the draft as a mere bureaucratic formality. “Now it’s like, what exactly did we sign up for?” said Adrian Flynn, a high school senior in New York who turned 18 in October.
And demonstrators took to the streets of cities across the United States over the weekend to protest the killing of an Iranian general and the possibility that it could lead to yet another war.
“Unless the people of the United States rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences,” said a statement by the coalition behind the protests. That group included Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, an antiwar coalition, and Code Pink, an antiwar organization led by women.
More than 80 protests were organized, in places like Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Miami and Philadelphia. Marchers in Times Square in New York chanted, “U.S. out of the Middle East.”
Organizers had begun calling for nationwide protests early last week, before the drone strike that killed General Suleimani. They had already been fearful of the possible effects of rising tensions between the United States and Iran in recent months.
Even as Western allies said they had been given no warning about the United States’ killing of General Suleimani, Britain’s foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said on Sunday that America had a right to self-defense in killing the Iranian military commander.
Asked in an interview with the BBC whether the killing was legal, Mr. Raab said, “There is a right of self-defense.”
“It was General Suleimani’s job description to engage proxies and militias,” Mr. Raab said, “to attack Western countries that were legitimately there.”
Describing General Suleimani as a “regional menace,” he said he did not agree that the killing was an act of war — a label that Iran’s United Nations ambassador used to describe the killing, and which analysts have said is applicable.
Mr. Raab said he had spoken to Iraq’s prime minister and president to urge a de-escalation of tensions in the region after the drone killing.
President Emmanuel Macron of France spoke by telephone with President Trump on Sunday, according to a statement from the French president’s office, and expressed solidarity with allies “in light of the attacks carried out in recent weeks against the coalition in Iraq,” his office said in the statement.
Mr. Macron also expressed concerns about “destabilizing activities of the Quds force under General Qassem Soleimani,” his office said, and urged Iran avoid “taking any measures that could lead to an escalation in the situation and destabilizing the region.”
In Germany, a government spokeswoman also expressed sympathy for the United States’ position. “The American action was a reaction to a series of military provocations for which Iran is responsible,” the spokeswoman, Ulrike Demmer, said at a news conference on Friday, according to Reuters.
“We also see with great concern Iran’s activities in the region,” she said, adding that Berlin would aim to de-escalate the tensions.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had criticized Europes response to the killing of General Suleimani, telling Fox News on Friday night that “the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be.”
Reporting was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin, Ben Hubbard, Falih Hassan, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Eric Schmitt, Vivian Yee, David D. Kirkpatrick, Edward Wong, Tess Felder, Yonette Joseph, Mariel Padilla and Maggie Haberman.