The Obama administration said on Monday it has sent yet another complement of US troops to safeguard its Baghdad embassy, a measure intended to ward off another Benghazi-style assault on American diplomats.



It brings the number of US military personnel flowing into Iraq to 750, up from 100 barely two weeks ago.

The latest troop deployment, announced by the Pentagon on Monday, adds 300 US troops for the task of protecting the embassy, including 100 whom the administration announced weeks ago had been pre-positioned outside Iraq on standby. Specialising in tasks like airfield management and logistics, the new deployment more than doubles the 170 marines and others already in charge of embassy security.



They are separate from the army special forces "advisers" whom President Barack Obama ordered into Iraq to help plan the Iraqi security forces' military response to the sudden loss of much of its territory to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), which on Sunday declared an Islamic caliphate and, seemingly heralding its ambitions, changed its name to simply the Islamic State.



The new embassy protection force comes equipped with helicopters and drones – the Pentagon left ambiguous whether those drones are armed – to "bolster airfield and travel route security," said Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. The Pentagon has already revealed that some of the drones flying up to 35 daily missions above Isis-controlled territory are armed, ostensibly to protect the new "advisers" in Baghdad.



Left unheralded from the Pentagon's new troop deployment are the thousands of security contractors the State Department hired years ago to protect its facilities and personnel after the 2011 US troop withdrawal.



"The presence of these additional forces will help enable the embassy to continue its critical diplomatic mission and work with Iraq on challenges they are facing as they confront" the Islamic State, Kirby said on Monday.



The Obama administration is holding in reserve a more substantial military response, potentially including air strikes, as it waits to see if and how Iraq's leaders will form a government willing and capable of including disaffected Sunni Iraqis. While administration officials have been hesitant to expressly hinge airstrikes on the composition of the next government, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraq last week to urge a rapid and inclusive government to coalesce by this week.



Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose party won the most seats in the April parliamentary election, has taken a defiant approach to what looks like a signal from Washington that he should go. Maliki's former US allies, even those who helped install him in 2006, have turned on him.

