Two NATO countries announced Wednesday that they are suspending military training exercises in Iraq following a U.S. warning of increased threats from Iran-affiliated forces in the region.
On the same day that the United States ordered all nonemergency U.S. employees to evacuate Iraq, Germany and the Netherlands said that they would temporarily suspend training for troops in the country, according to Reuters.
Germany has 160 soldiers deployed to Iraq who are involved in training Iraqi forces, and the Netherlands has 169 military and civilian personnel in the region. Dutch forces in Iraq have reportedly been ordered to stay indoors since Sunday.
A spokesperson for the German Defense Ministry said that training exercises could resume in the next few days, noting that it doesn’t have any independent knowledge of impending attacks by Iran.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees most military operations in the Middle East, issued a statement Tuesday indicating that troops working to contain ISIS have been put on “a high level of alert,” based on “credible and possibly imminent threats to U.S. forces in Iraq.”
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have increased in recent weeks. There has been a pointed pressure campaign by the U.S. to target Iran’s finances in order to cripple its ability to fund foreign terror organizations and proxies in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. President Trump announced new sweeping sanctions against Iran’s metals industry last week and had previously announced that it would stop providing waivers to countries that import Iranian oil.
The U.S. deployed the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East earlier this month in response to what national security adviser John Bolton described as “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran.
