Following violent protests outside of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the United States of America is deploying 3,000 additional soldiers to the Middle East, according to Courtney Kube of NBC News. The additional troops will join the 750 stationed troops that were deployed earlier this week.

The protests took place in the wake of a U.S. airstrike that killed at least 25, including Qassem Soleimani, one of the country’s most influential figures and the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force. U.S. intelligence indicted that Soleimani was planning what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as “imminent” attacks on U.S. forces with Iranian proxy forces.

The drone attack, ordered by President Donald Trump without congressional authorization, has both alienated ally support while inflaming tensions in the Middle East, with Iranian government vowing “harsh revenge” for the drone strikes. However, despite rapidly escalating tensions in an already volatile relationship with the Middle East, U.S. defense officials deny any correlation between the airstrike and the subsequent deployment of 3,000 additional soldiers.

Hours after the attack that killed Soleimani, thousands of protesters charged the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, most of them associated with Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iran-endorsed Shiite militia group. The protesters attempted to breach security by entering the main building of the embassy, peppering the building with Molotov cocktails.

The 3,000 soldiers will be provided by the Immediate Response Force of the 82nd Airborne Division and will be spread between Kuwait and Iraq.