IRAQ - Iraq has promised to guarantee the safety of US interests from Iran, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday as he paid a surprise trip to Baghdad where he accused Tehran of planning "imminent" attacks. Pompeo abruptly cancelled talks in Germany and made a lengthy detour from a European tour to spend four hours in Iraq, where he met both President Barham Saleh and Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi. Pompeo said he made the trip because Iranian forces are "escalating their activity" and said the threat of attacks were "very specific". He declined to go into further detail on the alleged plot, which has been met with scepticism in numerous quarters, with leading Democratic lawmakers fearing that President Donald Trump's administration is seeking to spark a war with Iran.