Iran Press/ Middle East: Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iraqi Shia group, said that the presence of US troops breached the sovereignty of Iraq.
“Trump must be aware that Iraq’s sovereignty came with blood, not the building of bases in this country of resistance and martyrs. The government has a duty to expel US troops as a violation of the country’s sovereignty,” Nujaba spokesman Hashim al-Mousawi told Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television channel.
Donald Trump has visited Iraq on Wednesday and met with US service members stationed at the Al Asad Air Base in western Anbar Province.
Trump has said US forces will stay in Iraq and could reenter Syria from there.
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The Kata’ib Hezbollah group also stressed that the resistance front would make the US withdraw its forces from Iraq, adding that the fact that Trump made a surprise trip meant that “he does not feel safe announcing his visit to Iraq.”
“The decision to withdraw US troops belongs to the will of the people and its parliament; the resistance will force the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq,” the group’s spokesman Jafar al-Hussaini told al-Mayadeen.
“Leaders in the Iraqi resistance vowed to cut the hand that extends to neighboring countries including Syria,” he added.
Trump defends his Syria pullout plan but denies similar plans for Iraq as he pays a secret visit to Baghdad.
He acknowledged security concerns about visiting Iraq, saying it was “pretty sad” that he needed such secrecy to see US troops.
“Pretty sad when you spend $7 trillion in the Middle East, and going in has to be under this massive cover with planes all over and all of the greatest equipment in the world, and you do everything to get in safely,” he said.
A scheduled meeting between Trump and Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi was scrapped and they only talked over phone.
Abdul-Mahdi’s office said in a statement that the cancellation came as a result of “disagreement over how to conduct the meeting.”
The US, backed by the UK, invaded Iraq in 2003 under the pretext that the former regime of Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons, however, were ever found in the country.
The invasion led to the rise of terrorist groups such as Daesh (ISIS).105/210
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