US President Donald Trump said that he had ordered the targeting of the Iranian "Quds Force" commander Qassem Soleimani, because he was saying bad things about the United States.

This came in an interview Trump gave before a gathering of Republican donors, in a new justification for the targeting of Soleimani, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.

He added: "To what extent should we listen to that?"

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that Soleimani was planning an imminent attack on Americans and was working to build a network of campaign activities that would have killed an additional large number of Americans.