U.S. President Donald Trump said the US acted to stop a war by killing Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike.

At a press conference on Friday, the US president said: “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”

Trump said the US was not seeking regime change, but claimed the world was a safer place without “monsters” such as Soleimani.

He said: “If Americans anywhere are threatened we have all of those targets fully identified and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary, and that particularly refers to Iran.”

He added that the Iranian general was plotting “imminent and serious attacks on American diplomats.”

The commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed early Friday in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport that was authorized by President Trump, American officials said.

The commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani and several officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran were killed when an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles into a convoy that was leaving the airport.

General Suleimani was the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades, and his death was a staggering blow for Iran at a time of sweeping geopolitical conflict.