Washington:
US President
Donald Trump on Monday threatened to impose “very big” sanctions on
Iraq after its Parliament called on the US military to leave the country for
assassinating top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a drone attack in Baghdad.
The Iraqi Parliament on Sunday voted to expel the US troops
from its territory which have been there to help the Iraq dispensation fight
the Islamic State terror group.
Some 5,000 US soldiers are in Iraq as part of the
international coalition against the IS terror group.
Iraq’s move comes in response to the killing of Maj Gen
Soleimani, 62, the head of Iran’s elite al-Quds force and architect of its
regional security apparatus, in a US drone attack on a convoy that was leaving
the Baghdad International Airport early on Friday. The strike also killed the
deputy chief of Iraq’s powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis.
Soleimani’s killing was the most dramatic escalation yet in
spiraling tensions between Iran and the US, already hit by serious differences
over Tehran’s ambitious nuclear programme.
We’re not leaving (Iraq) unless they pay us back for
it,” Trump said while responding to a question on the resolution passed by
the Iraqi Parliament.
He was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One while
travelling from Mar-a-Lago in Florida to Andrews Joint Base in Maryland as he
returned to the White House from his Christmas and New Year vacation.
We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s
there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time We’re not
leaving unless they pay us back for it, he said. However, Trump did not name the airbase.
If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very
friendly basis. We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before
ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame, Trump said issuing a
strong warning to Iraq.
Trump also threatened to put “very big” sanctions
on Iraq if there is any opposition from the Gulf country.
If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is
inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on
Iraq, he said. Trump said that the
US has spent a lot of money in Iraq.
I told you, Iraq, was the worst decision, going into the
Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country, and
I’ve said that publicly so I guess I can say that right now going into the
Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country, but
we are there and they went into Iraq, he said.
Iraq, by the way, they didn’t knock down the World Trade
Center (WTC). That’s been very nicely proven. But we went in and we’re there
and we’re pulling out, pulling out of a lot of different areas. With Syria, I
pulled out because I’m not going to guard his border. Why should I be guarding
the border? he asked.
They’ve got troops, let them guard, that border’s been under
siege, for thousands of years they’ve been fighting on that border. We call it
the safe zone, it’s really the opposite of the safe zone, many many people have
been killed and by the way many people from Turkey have been killed, it’s a
double,” Trump said.
As the tensions escalated between Iran and the US following
the killing of Soleimani, Tehran on Sunday announced its fifth step back from
the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, saying it would not observe the nuclear deal’s
restrictions on fuel enrichment, on the size of its enriched uranium stockpile
and on its research and development activities.
In a statement, Tehran, however, said it would continue
cooperating “as before” with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), which monitors the implementation of the nuclear deal.
President Trump abandoned the Iranian nuclear deal in 2018,
saying he wanted to force Iran to negotiate a new deal that would place
indefinite curbs on its nuclear programme and also halt its development of
ballistic missiles.
On Saturday night, Trump warned that the US will target 52
sites in Iran some of which are “at a very high level and important to
Iran and the Iranian culture” if the Islamic republic attacks American
personnel or assets. Responding to
Trump’s remarks, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said targeting cultural
sites was a ‘war crime’.
Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed a revenge
against the killing of his general, saying “severe revenge awaits the
criminals” behind the attack.
Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure
in Iran behind the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His Quds Force, an
elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG), reported directly to the
Ayatollah Khamenei and he was hailed as a heroic national figure. By Lalit K Jha (PTI)