WASHINGTON >> In the last days of 2019, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and senior Pentagon officials gave President Donald Trump a list of options for responding to Iranian-led violence in Iraq.

They included an extreme one — killing Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful commander — as almost an afterthought, convinced the president would not take it.

He did. On Jan. 3, 2020, the Iranian general was killed in a U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport.

The fallout was immediate. Iranian groups put a price on Milley’s head. He, along with Esper and the Central Command leader, Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., moved to the top of Iran’s retaliatory kill list, U.S. officials have said.

Now, a decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to remove Milley’s security detail has raised alarm as Trump seeks retribution against his perceived enemies at home.

Even Trump’s allies are concerned.

“I would encourage the president to revisit this,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday. “It’s possible that these people could be targeted by Iranian assassins in public where innocent bystanders could be injured. This could have a chilling effect on the people around the president right now, on giving him the advice that he needs in carrying out his decisions.”

Hegseth, who was confirmed last week, has spent his first days in office targeting transgender troops, diversity programs and Defense Department leaders who caught Trump’s ire.

In Trump’s first hours back in office, Milley’s portrait was removed from a Pentagon hallway. Then late Tuesday, Hegseth announced that in addition to pulling the general’s security detail, he was revoking his security clearance and ordering an inspector general inquiry into his record.