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Another Withdrawal That Wasn’t

Defense Secretary Esper quickly smothered any hope that the U.S. would be leaving.
Iraq flag cracked

For a short time today, it appeared as if U.S. forces might actually be preparing to leave Iraq following the reporting of a letter sent to the Iraqi government by an American military commander:

The letter was confirmed as authentic by several U.S. officials. This led to a surge of speculation about how and when this “repositioning” would happen and whether it would result in a full withdrawal. Of course, like anything that seemed too good to be true, it turns out that the administration has no intention of removing the troops in Iraq. Defense Secretary Esper quickly smothered any hope that the U.S. would be leaving:

It seemed unlikely that the military had been instructed to pack up and leave just a few hours after Trump was ranting about putting sanctions on Iraq. The details that should have given everything away that the letter didn’t reflect administration policy were the references to respecting Iraqi sovereignty. The Trump administration has repeatedly shown no respect for Iraqi sovereignty over the last two weeks, and it didn’t make sense that they were going to start behaving differently now.

It is worth noting that the Iraqi prime minister has claimed that the reason for Soleimani’s presence in Baghdad was to meet with him as part of an effort by Iraq to serve as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. According to the prime minister, Soleimani was coming to Baghdad to deliver the Iranian response to the previous Saudi message:

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi said at a parliamentary session on Sunday that he was scheduled to meet with Qasem Soleimani on the morning the top Iranian general was killed.

Mahdi said Soleimani was supposed to carry a message from Iran “in response to the Saudi message that we brought to Iran in order to reach important agreements and situations regarding Iraq and the region.”

Mahdi said he was optimistic after a visit to Saudi Arabia in September 2019 that Baghdad had a plan to open dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran to calm tensions in the region, according to an interview on state-run TV station al-Iraqiya.

The Iraqi prime minister’s claim further undermines the administration’s account of what Soleimani was doing in Iraq. The U.S. position in Iraq is untenable. As Abbas Kadhim explains in a new article today, the U.S. destroyed its relationship with Iraq when Trump ordered the strike that killed Soleimani on Iraqi soil:

Sunday’s vote in Iraq is very significant both in symbol and substance. As it has done in the past, Iraq is choosing sovereignty over national interests. The parliament acted to remove the extremely important US military presence that trains Iraqis and combats terrorism because it was used for other purposes such as conducting the strike on Soleimani, which violated the Iraqi constitution and the US-Iraqi Strategic Framework Agreement. While it can take up to a year to fully dissolve the formal military partnership with the United States, given the circumstances, the process will be significantly quicker if not immediate.

The U.S. and Iraq may eventually rebuild their relationship, but that won’t be possible as long U.S. forces remain in Iraq. The Trump administration has to realize that a continued U.S. military presence is politically impossible for the Iraqi government, and the longer that Washington delays in removing our forces from Iraq the worse things will be for the future of the relationship.

Update: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has also confirmed that there are no plans to withdraw:

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