Trump’s Anti-Iran Comments Spark Iraqi Demands for US Exit

TEHRAN (defapress) – Iraqi politicians Monday hit back at Donald Trump after the US president said he plans to keep American forces in the country to watch Iran.

News ID: 75407

Date: 04 February 2019 - 16:00

Sabah al-Saadi, a member of parliament in the bloc led by influential anti-American religious scholar Moqtada Sadr, has proposed a bill demanding a US pullout.

Trump's latest remarks had made passing such a law "a national duty."

Deputy speaker of parliament Hassan Karim al-Kaabi, also close to Sadr, said they were a "new provocation," weeks after the US president sparked outrage in Iraq by visiting US troops at Ain al-Asad without meeting a single Iraqi official.

Kurdish MP Sarkawt Shams tweeted that the mission of US troops in Iraq was "to help Iraqi security forces against terrorism, not 'watching' others."

"We are expecting the United States to respect Our mutual interests and avoid pushing Iraq into a regional conflict," he said.

In an interview with CBS television, Trump reaffirmed his determination to pull the United States out of "endless wars" in Syria and Afghanistan but said American troops would stay on in Iraq, partly "to be looking a little bit at Iran."

"We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it," he said, referring to Ain al-Asad air base in western Iraq that he visited in December.

"If somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we're going to know it before they do," he said in the interview aired on Sunday.

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