US President Donald Trump has caused outrage in Baghdad that US forces should „oversee Iran“ from Iraq. „The Iraqi constitution bans the use of Iraq as a base to attack a neighboring country,“ Iraqi President Barham Saleh said today. The US troops are based on joint agreements in Iraq and any activity outside this framework is „unacceptable“.
Trump told TV broadcaster CBS yesterday that the US wanted to „keep“ the Iraqi airbase Ain al-Assad and „monitor Iran.“ „If anyone wants to develop nuclear weapons, we’ll know it before they do it,“ Trump said, looking at Tehran. In Iraq, where there has long been calls for a withdrawal of US troops, these statements promptly met with protest.
„New Provocation“ Trumps
Representative Sabah al-Saadi said, „The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is a national duty.“ The MEP of the Shiite preacher Moctada al-Sadr called for the immediate adoption of a bill for the withdrawal he had recently made to parliament. Representative Hassan al-Kaabi, who is also close to Sadr, spoke of a „new provocation“ Trumps.
Trump had already angered the Iraqis when he traveled to Ain al-Assad for a troop visit on Christmas without meeting with representatives of the Iraqi government. Officially, the US no longer maintains its own bases in Iraq, but has stationed only military advisers on Iraqi bases to train the Iraqi army and to assist in the fight against the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS).
„The mission of the US Army in Iraq is to support the Iraqi security forces against terrorism, not to ‚monitor‘ others,“ criticized Kurdish opposition MP Zarqaw Tschemseddin. For his part, pro-Iranian MP Hassan Salem criticized Iraq as „not your home base and we no longer accept foreign troops on our soil“.
