A Pentagon source informed the Mideast publication Al-Hurra that 3,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division will be deployed to the Middle East. They will be sent to various bases, mostly in Kuwait. US officials told Reuters that the deployment is being done mainly as a precautionary strategy against any potential threats since the region is escalating in intensity after the assassination of Soleimani and the subsequent storming of the US embassy.  The officials added that these 3,000 soldiers will be added to a force of 650 soldiers who were sent to Kuwait last week. According to NBC:

The United States is sending approximately 3,000 soldiers to the Middle East after thousands of people stormed the compound of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, three U.S. defense officials and one U.S. military official confirmed to NBC News on Friday.

The news came hours after an American airstrike killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force and one of the country’s most powerful figures, but U.S. defense officials said the deployments were not in response to the strike.

The deployment of additional soldiers from a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, comes after thousands of people, most of them affiliated with the Iran-backed Shiite militia group Kataeb Hezbollah, descended on the embassy compound Tuesday.

An increase in US military presence in the Middle East is the American empire trying to maintain her control. But what is going to happen if the Shiite and Islamic backlash against this American hegemony gets violent to the point that the US either goes to war or gives up altogether and isolates herself? It will be a sign of the empire leaving her position, which means that  regional powers such as Turkey and Iran will simply grow larger. Turkey expanding into Syria with the US’ sanctioning, alongside Turkey about to enter Libya are all indications of this American empire putting her thumb up in approval of the building up of Turkish hegemony.