Fog Blog World Log: Pres. Trump Orders Strike Killing Top Iranian General:

DONALD TRUMP ORDERS DRONE STRIKE THAT KILLS IRANIAN GENERAL.....IN ORDER TO SAVE AMERICAN LIVES AS PLANS WERE UNDERWAY BY THIS GENERAL TO STRIKE ENEMIES! IRAN VOWS REVENGE!.....

US President Donald Trump has said that he ordered a precision strike to "terminate" a top Iranian commander who was plotting "imminent and sinister attacks" on Americans, adding that the decision was one of deterrence rather than aggression.

"We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war," Trump said in a statement from his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday, a day after a US drone strike on a Baghdad airport killed Qasem Soleimani.

Later, while at a Miami church for an Evangelicals for Trump event, the President said: "He was planning a very major attack and we got him."

The move marks a major escalation in regional tensions that have pitted Tehran against Washington and its allies in the Middle East, raising the specter of further regional destabilization. The strike, condemned by Iran and its allies as an "assassination," has been met with concern by European officials and the United Nations, who have called for de-escalation.

The Pentagon on Thursday confirmed the strike killed Soleimani, who as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force became the architect of Tehran's proxy conflicts in the Middle East.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis -- the deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) -- was also killed, according to a statement from the PMF, which said the pair "were martyred by an American strike."