Iran news – live: Trump claims Qassem Soleimani was ‘plotting to kill’ Americans, and urges US citizens to leave Iraq after killing of Iran’s top general

US citizens working for foreign oil companies in Iraq have left Basra at the request of their government, the country's oil ministry has said.

Donald Trump has made his first statement since the bombing last night.

"Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!" he said.

Iran’s allies and proxy forces across the Middle East promised to take revenge against the US for its killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Friday, setting the scene for retaliatory attacks throughout the region and beyond, writes Richard Hall.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the powerful Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah and a key partner in Iran’s regional network, vowed to continue Soleimani’s “tireless struggle” in a statement mourning his death.

“It will be the responsibility, duty, and action of all the resistance fighters and Mujahideen throughout the world to take revenge from his criminal killers who are the worst villains of this world,” Nasrallah said in the statement.

“It will not be permitted for this pure blood which was unjustly shed to go to waste,” he added.

Russia's Ministry of Defence has called the killing of Soleimani "short-sighted," the IFAX news agency has reported.

"It's war," a former US intelligence officer has told our international correspondent, Borzou Daragahi. 

"It was always been somewhat of a war, but when you cut his head off, that’s war. There’s no other way around it. Now you have to deal with the second and third-order effects," they said.

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, has said the airstrike aimed to disrupt an "imminent attack" that would have endangered Americans in the Middle East.

Mr Pompeo declined to discuss many details of the alleged threat in interviews on Fox News and CNN, but said it was "an intelligence based assessment" that drove the US decision to target Soleimani.

"He was actively plotting in the region to take actions -- a big action as he described it -- that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk. We know it was imminent," Mr Pompeo told CNN.

"These were threats that were located in the region," he added.

"Last night was the time that we needed to strike to make sure that this imminent attack ... was disrupted."

Iraq's speaker of parliament, Mohamed al-Halbousi, has said the US air strike that killed Soleimani at Baghdad airport was a breach of Iraqi sovereignty.

"Yesterday's targeting of a military commander in Iraq's armed forces near Baghdad international airport is a flagrant breach of sovereignty and violation of international agreements," he said in a statement.

"Iraq must avoid becoming a battlefield or a side in any regional or international conflict," he added. 

Mr Halbousi called on the Iraqi government to take the necessary steps to stop such attacks.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry has said it is following developments in Iraq with great concern and has called on world powers to avoid further escalation.

Meanwhile, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said the US air strike which killed Soleimani will increase insecurity and instability in the region.

Donald Trump has said Soleimani was plotting to kill many more Americans and was responsible for the deaths of a large number of protesters in Iran before he was killed in a US airstrike. 

Is this war by accident or war by design? We’ve all said that a major war in the Middle East could start by accident. But no-one thought Donald Trump would go for the jugular quite like this. To kill General Qassem Soleimani is a sword at the heart of Iran, without doubt. And on whose behalf? writes Robert Fisk.

Trump boasts of his relationship with the Saudi king who has talked of “cutting off the head of the Iranian snake” and whose oil facilities were attacked with drone-fired missiles – which the US blamed on Iran – last year. Or Israel? Or is this just another decision with incalculable results, taken by a crackpot president in the US?

Just imagine what would happen if a leading American general – or two, since Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was a leading pro-Iranian figure in Iraq – was blown up on a tour of the Middle East. There would be airstrikes, attacks on Iran’s nuclear centres, threats by Washington to close down all traffic between Iran and the outside world. The death of an American in Baghdad on Friday and the riots outside the US embassy, while sad, scarcely justify American attacks on this scale.