Pompeo rebuffs Iraqi leader’s demand for US troop withdrawal as critics warn of ISIS resurgence
BAGHDAD — The Trump administration on Friday rebuffed demands from Iraq’s prime minister to begin planning for the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq.
Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a phone call Thursday to send a U.S. delegation to Iraq to negotiate the withdrawal of U.S troops, according to a statement released Friday by the Iraqi leader.
But the State Department’s chief spokeswoman said the U.S. presence in Iraq is a “force for good” and U.S. officials would not discuss a military withdrawal.
“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,” said Morgan Ortagus, the spokeswoman.
During a news briefing Friday about new Iran sanctions, Pompeo said he would be “happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is” for U.S. troops in the country.
But, Pompeo added, the U.S. military mission there “is very clear”: to train Iraqi security forces and fight the Islamic State. “We’re going to continue that mission,” he said.
America’s military presence in Iraq has become a flashpoint between the two allies after President Donald Trump’s decision last week to kill a top Iranian general who was in Baghdad. Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who led an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The strike also killed an Iraqi military official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was the deputy commander of an Iran-backed militia organization known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Abdul-Mahdi has called the U.S. strike a political “assassination” and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.
Trump administration officials have defended the strike as legal and necessary, saying Soleimani was planning attacks on U.S. assets in the region. But they have declined to provide evidence of the plot and have given conflicting accounts of how “imminent” it was.
“There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qasem Soleimani, and we don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real,” Pompeo said during an interview with Fox News that aired Thursday.
Trump campaigned on a promise to bring U.S. troops home from far-flung “endless wars,” and he has ordered draw downs in Syria and Afghanistan. The U.S. has an estimated 5,000 American troops in Iraq, but Trump has resisted Iraq’s pressure to bring them home. Such a move would be fraught with political and national security implications, including a possible resurgence of the Islamic State.
“A complete US military withdrawal in the current context would be disastrous,” William Wechsler, director of the Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank, wrote in a recent Jan. 5 analysis.
For starters, it would “abandon Iraq to Iranian influence” just as Iraq is choosing a new prime minister, said Wechsler.
Iranian leaders have said their main goal in the wake of Soleimani’s death is to drive the U.S. out of the Middle East.
A U.S. withdrawal now could also pave the way for a resurgence of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
It would be a “gift to ISIS,” Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said at an Atlantic Council forum on Thursday.
“This is an incredibly dangerous moment,” Murphy added, referring to the potential for both Iran to expand its influence in Iraq and for ISIS to make a comeback there.
Iraq’s parliament on Sunday approved a nonbinding resolution calling for U.S. troops to leave. U.S. officials have noted the vote was taken when Sunni, Kurd and some Shiite lawmakers, who hold more favorable views toward the U.S. military mission, were not present.
Pompeo suggested the anger at the U.S. in Iraq would pass, and he noted that the current prime minister is on his way out of office.
“We’ve been in their country, we’ve been supporting Iraqi sovereignty, we’ve been continuing to take down the terrorist threat against the Iraqi people,” he said Sunday on Fox News. “The prime minister is the resigned prime minister … We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign.”
But Abdul-Mahdi’s comments to Pompeo suggests he is pushing ahead with that demand, despite his own caretaker status and the recent steps toward de-escalation between Tehran and Washington that have put Iraq on the brink of a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran.
The Iraqi leader asked Pompeo to “send delegates to Iraq to prepare a mechanism to carry out the parliament’s resolution regarding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq,” said the statement from Abdul-Mahdi.
“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 statement added.
Ortagus said the U.S has been “unambiguous” about how crucial the U.S. mission is in Iraq. American troops are there to help fight the Islamic State. She said U.S. officials are willing to talk to Iraqi leaders, but not about withdrawing.
“There does … need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership,” she said. “We want to be a friend and partner to a sovereign, prosperous, and stable Iraq.”
Top American military officials including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper have said there are no plans for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq.
But military officials sowed confusion about the U.S. commitment earlier this week, when a letter, written by U.S. general to Iraqi officials, suggested the U.S. was preparing to withdraw because of the Iraqi parliament’s vote. Esper and Milley told reporters it was a draft letter and a mistake.
Simmering tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated sharply after Dec. 27, when a rocket attack, blamed on an Iranian-backed militia group, caused the death of an American contractor at a base in Kirkuk province. The U.S. responded with a barrage of strikes on the militia’s bases, killing at least 25 people.
Pro-Iranian protesters then stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, temporarily stranding diplomats inside and leaving parts of the compound damaged and charred. Trump then ordered the Soleimani strike. Iran responded by launching more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases that house U.S. and coalition forces.
No Americans or Iraqis were killed in the Iranian strikes. And tensions began to ratchet down Wednesday when Trump said Iran seemed to be “standing down” and he, too, signaled that Washington would be stepping away from further confrontation.
Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook and the Associated Press
Usatoday.com
On Friday, the leader of the National Coalition, Iyad Allawi, announced his resignation from the membership of the Iraqi parliament.
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{International: Al Furat News} US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed Washington’s full confidence that the people of Iraq want American forces to remain on their soil, regardless of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.