First of 3,000 US soldiers board flights

 

 The United States is sending nearly 3,000 more Army troops to the Mideast on Saturday from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  

The soldiers are in addition to about 700 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne who deployed to Kuwait earlier this week after the storming of the US Embassy compound in Baghdad by Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters

  

A US Army paratrooper prepares for departure to the Middle East from Fort Bragg

The additional troop deployments reflect concerns about potential Iranian retaliatory action. But they also run counter to Trump’s repeated push to extract the United States from Mideast conflicts. 

Trump has repeatedly called for withdrawing from Syria and Afghanistan, but over the past year he has greatly increased U.S. troop totals in the Middle East.

More broadly, some congressional Democrats and national security analysts questioned whether the Trump administration is prepared for Iranian retaliation and the prospect of political backlash in Iraq, where American troops are working with Iraqi forces in a sometimes tense partnership against the Islamic State extremist group. 

The Pentagon said it wants to sustain that work, but some Iraqi leaders said it might be time for U.S. troops to leave.

On Wednesday at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, paratroopers from the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division boarded C-17 Globemaster aircraft transports bound for Kuwait. They have since arrived.