Foreign Minister Winston Peters said heightened tensions in the Middle East are of strong concern, and government is calling for restraint and de-escalation.
Peters said achievements in the fight against Islamic State have been hard won, and it's important those gains are consolidated, not undermined.
The government will keep the security situation under close review, and any threats to deployed personnel and diplomatic staff are viewed very seriously.
However, it has not yet commented on whether it will abide by the Iraqi government request to withdraw all foreign troops.
National's Defence spokesperson Mark Mitchell said there is still a threat from groups like al-Qaeda and Islamic State so it would be wise for the government to see if the Iraqi government acted on the resolution or whether the need for global security would prevail.
He said New Zealand should not make a knee-jerk response.
"The coalition and Iraqi troops have been very successful in dismantling and removing the threat of ISIS and the caliphate," Mitchell said.
"I've always felt very strongly the important part is the follow up, and this is often where we get the strategy wrong - leaving too early, the vacuum reappears and then all of a sudden we're back in a situation where international terror and global security is a bigger issue for us again."
However, the government may have no choice but to bring forward the June departure announced by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last year.
"Of course we're there at the invitation of a sovereign nation, Iraq, and if their Parliament decides that they no longer want coalition troops in their country supporting training, participating and ensuring that that threat does not return, then, of course, we'd have to respect that," Mitchell said.
In a statement, the New Zealand Defence Force rejected earlier reports it was already planning to evacuate its troops from Taji.
"The NZDF is not actively preparing to evacuate New Zealand personnel in the region," a spokesman said.
"Any decision to evacuate NZDF personnel would be a decision made by the NZ Government."
Alexander Gillespie, a professor of International Relations at Waikato University, told Summer Times the Government may decide to accelerate the Defence Force's exit from Iraq.
"I'm concerned about their safety. I think this could turn quickly. It will depend on what Iran does next and they have a menu of options of what they can do.
"They're going to try and avoid a direct conflict [with the US] because they won't win a direct conflict but indirect conflict they've got a much better chance and one of the vulnerable points is Iraq because there's a lot of Shia militia there and the country doesn't have a strong central authority.
"It's also got woeful economic conditions ... so it's ripe for turmoil so if they decide to pressure and focus on the coalition troops, including the New Zealand coalition troops, they could find themselves at the short end of the conflict."
He said New Zealand troops went to Iraq as part of a US-led coalition, not as part of a United Nations presence. If Iran chose to make trouble it could even try and cause a civil war in Iraq and the coalition troops could become a target.
"The worst-case scenario you'd want to happen now is that the Iranian Shia militia in Iraq decide to start attacking those troops because if that happened we would not want to be part of that war.
"It was right to be there to defeat Islamic State; it's not right to be there if Iraq fragments in a regional war with Iran."
Gillespie said the US has been acting on its own right now, because it knows traditional core allies like France, Germany and likely New Zealand would not have been in favour of the killing of Soleimani.
International law was divided over such extra-judicial killings, but on a practical level it meant nations lost the ability to keep talking to each other.
"This is an extreme act. This is the kind of act that [George] Bush and [Barack] Obama both steered away from even though it would have been possible.
"But as a provocation many countries when they have one of their heads of state or one of their senior diplomats or ambassadors killed will see this traditionally as a cause for war and a legitimate cause for war."
- RNZ
