Intel: How Trump laid legal groundwork to strike Iran after Iraqi militia attacks

Mounting tensions between US forces and Tehran-backed proxies in Iraq could lead to broader American military action against Iran. If that happens, President Donald Trump already has at his disposal a legal opinion the State Department submitted to Congress last June.

“We do not make a distinction between the Iranian regime and any of its proxies that they organize, train and equip,” a senior State Department official told reporters today. “We are not giving Iran the fiction of deniability any longer.”