The newspaper said on Saturday that the officials thought Trump would not go with the decision to assassinate Soleimani. Trump initially rejected this option on December 28, but changed his mind following Iran-backed attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad.

The final decision that stunned the Pentagon officials was made late on Thursday.

According to the sources, cited by the newspaper, there were disputes in the administration over the importance of new information, received via intelligence services, regarding threats to US military and diplomatic personnel in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Soleimani traveled to these three countries and was planning an attack that could have killed hundreds of people, the sources claimed.

Some officials were skeptical about the rationale for assassinating Soleimani, and kept saying that the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei did not yet approve Soleimani’s plans for an attack, but rather asked him to return to Tehran for further consultations a week before his death, according to the newspaper.

According to the sources from the presidential administration, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were supporting the most extreme decisions against Iran.

Defence Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley did not make comments about the article to the newspaper, but Miley’s spokeswoman, Col. DeDe Halfhill, said that "some of the characterizations being asserted by other sources are false," as quoted by The New York Times.

Soleimani was killed in Baghdad by a US airstrike authorized by Trump early on Friday. Iran vowed harsh revenge over the general's killing.