From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is the Daily.

Today, from Iraq to Washington, consequences are mounting. After the United States

assassinated, Iranian general Kassam Suhamanin, Helene Cooper, on why President Trump chose to do it.

It's Monday, January 6th.

Helene, what do we know about what led up to this extraordinary decision by the U.S.

to take out General Suhamanin?

Well, from what we've been able to piece together over the past few days, is all of this started

on December 27th. And Justin DeFopton, American contractor, was just killed in Northern Iraq

in a rocket attack, and several U.S. troops were also injured.

When an Iranian bat, she at militia group launched an attack in Iraq that ended up killing

an American contractor. This is just the latest in a spate of similar rocket attacks, but it's

the first time that we're actually seeing U.S. casualties. Right after this happened,

the Pentagon drew up the perennial list of options that the Defense Department is always keeping

for the President to respond and decide what he's going to do in order to respond to the attack.

General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Mark

Esper, both flew to Mar-a-Lago where President Trump was spending the holidays and met with him

presenting him this list of how do you respond to what the administration immediately determined

was an Iranian-backed attack. One option included striking Iranian ships. Another option was striking

perhaps a missile side or two, or looking for a way to launch air strikes against the Iranian

back Shiite militias in Iraq that had started this. Also on the list was one extreme option,

which was to launch an attack, which would really be a targeted assassination actually of

General Kassin Salimani, who is the head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard,

...