American diplomats warned Iraq against demanding that the U.S. military leave Iraq, as the diplomatic fallout from the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani continues.
“One of the unfortunate downsides to the Soleimani operation is that it has led to a political backlash inside Iraq,” James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “I think what the State Department is doing is fighting a very tenacious rearguard action, hoping that the Iraqis will have second thoughts.”
Outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi amplified that dispute by announcing that he asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during a Thursday evening call, “to prepare a mechanism” for pulling U.S. and NATO forces from Iraq. Pompeo’s team rebuffed the request, hinting that an expulsion of U.S. troops would jeopardize other forms of aid.
“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a Friday morning bulletin. “There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership.”
That is an unusually blunt message to Baghdad, after days of complaints that the United States is violating Iraqi sovereignty. “The prime minister said American forces had entered Iraq and drones are flying in its airspace without permission from Iraqi authorities and this was a violation of the bilateral agreements,” the Iraqi leader’s office said.
American officials have emphasized that the U.S. military is in the country at the invitation of the central government in order to fight the Islamic State. Iraq has become a theater of stiff competition between the U.S. and Iran, however, as Tehran has cultivated political allies in Baghdad and used the ISIS crisis to enhance the power of proxy militias.
The Iraqi central government’s public criticism of the U.S. is belied by their private lobbying of Congress, experts say, as Baghdad fears that Trump will revoke the sanctions waivers that allow Iraq to import Iranian energy.
“They don’t know what they want because they have no good options,” a senior congressional Republican aide told the Washington Examiner. “They’re in bed with Iran, and these sanctions target people who are in bed with Iran.”
Iraqi lawmakers last week passed a resolution that called for U.S. troops to leave the country after Soleimani was killed. American officials cast doubt on the sincerity of that demand.
“That resolution they put forward was nonbinding,” a senior State Department official told reporters this week. “Who in Iraq would want to implement the removal of U.S. forces? I would assess that there’s no one in the Iraqi government at this date that would want to pursue that.”
Iraq relies on the U.S. for an array of benefits, among them the rousting of the Islamic State in vast swaths of the country. The terrorist group could rebound, though, if western forces left Iraq, and if Iraq’s Sunni Muslim population saw the withdrawal as proof that Iran holds the levers in power in Baghdad.
“I think many Iraqis are having second thoughts,” Phillips said. “But, I think Iraqi politicians fear Tehran more than they like Washington.”
