US President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Iran of being involved in organizing the storming of the US embassy in Baghdad, and called on the Iraqi government to protect the embassy.
In a tweet on his Twitter account shortly after the storming of the embassy in the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital from protesters angry at the American bombing of sites of the popular crowd, he held Iran fully responsible for this attack.
The US president accused Iran of killing an American contractor who injured others in the bombing that targeted a military base in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad.
Trump said that his country had responded strongly to the attack, and that it would always do so, and was referring to the raids launched by the US Air Force on Sunday evening on the sites of the Hezbollah Brigades Iraq, one of the Popular Mobilization factions, in the city of Al-Qaim in Anbar Province (western Iraq) and in Syria, which Killed 25 gunmen and wounded others.
The US President stated that his country had informed Baghdad of its responsibility to protect the American embassy, and expected to use its forces for that.
Later in the day, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said that the Iraqi government is keen to protect its foreign diplomatic missions.
Al-Jazeera correspondent in Washington, Murad Hashem, said that prominent Republican Senator Marco Rubio blamed Iran for the attack on the American embassy in Baghdad, and called for it to be held responsible for any attacks targeting American soldiers in the region.
Hashem quoted Rubio as saying that the attack on the embassy was carried out by "gangs", and that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was behind the sniping operations that took place during the storming of the building in order to accuse the United States.