IRAQ

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Re: IRAQ

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NEWSWEEK

"U.S. Military Says 'Ongoing Situation' in Iraq Amid Fourth Day of Attacks in A Row"


Tom O'Connor 

8 JULY 2021

A spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition has acknowledged to Newsweek reports of what would be the fourth day of attacks on U.S. positions previously mounted by Iraqi militia forces.

"We are aware of these reports," the U.S.-led coalition told Newsweek.

"As this is an ongoing situation, we have no further details at this time."

The statement came as outlets supportive of militias aligned with the pro-Iran "Axis of Resistance" circulated footage showing defensive systems at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad responding to unseen aerial threats.

The Sabreen News outlet claimed the attackers took a dual approach, launching Katyusha rockets from both the Al-Rasafa area and from the vicinity of Al-Kindi Hospital, though this could be not be independently verified.

If confirmed, the attack would signal yet another sign that Iraqi militias were willing to escalate their campaign to drive out U.S. forces from the country.

This is a developing story and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.

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Re: IRAQ

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

"U.S. to Announce Troop Drawdown From Iraq"


Jane Arraf and Eric Schmitt

24 JULY 2021

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s prime minister is heading to Washington this weekend to demand that President Biden withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, announcing to Iraqi media that the visit would “put an end to the presence of combat forces.”

American officials say the United States is likely to oblige the request from Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, setting a deadline to be announced on Monday for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces by the end of the year.


Pentagon and other administration officials say they will achieve this by removing a small but unspecified number of the 2,500 American forces currently stationed in Iraq, and by reclassifying on paper the roles of other forces.

Mr. al-Kadhimi will have a political trophy to take home to satisfy anti-American factions in Iraq and the U.S. military presence will remain.

“There will be no U.S. military forces in a combat role by the end of the year,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with ongoing discussions.

“We anticipate some force adjustments in line with that commitment.”

What appears to be a set piece of diplomatic theater is the latest effort by Mr. al-Kadhimi to tread between the needs and demands of Iraq’s two closest allies, the United States and Iran.

Pro-Iranian factions have been clamoring for a U.S. departure, while Iraqi officials acknowledge they still need the help of American forces.

The Biden administration in turn is grappling with how to operate in a country that since the U.S. invasion 18 years ago has fallen increasingly under the grip of Iranian-backed militias and a corrupt political system that has brought Iraq’s government institutions to the brink of collapse.

Mr. al-Kadhimi’s government, along with many senior Iraqi military officials, quietly favor the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq staying in their current form.

But the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, along with a senior Iraqi security official and eight others in an American drone strike in 2020, has made the United States’ current presence politically impossible, and politically undesirable in the United States.

After the U.S. drone strike, Iraq’s Parliament demanded the government expel U.S. forces — a motion that was nonbinding but sent a strong message to any politician who wanted to stay in power, including the prime minister.


Grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, a budget crisis and powerful Iranian-backed militias largely beyond his control, Mr. al-Kadhimi has accomplished little since taking office two years ago.

His advisers argue that if only he were given more time, he could rein in the militias, cut corruption and arrest more killers of hundreds of unarmed protesters and activists.

Most of Iraq’s paramilitary units were formed in 2014 in response to a call by the country’s most revered Shiite cleric for Iraqis to mobilize against the Islamic State.

Those militias were later absorbed into Iraq’s official security forces but the most powerful are tied to Iran and only nominally under control of the Iraqi state.

The United States has repeatedly blamed Iranian-backed militias for the persistent attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq.

The U.S. and many Iraqi officials believe the militias are also responsible for most of the assassinations of activists and for a wide range of illegal moneymaking schemes.

Monday’s announcement comes as the Pentagon nears the end of its withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year presence there, even as the Taliban have captured dozens of districts around the country in a military offensive.

After President Barack Obama withdrew troops from Iraq in 2011, some remained, under the authority of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Three years later, with Islamic State fighters capturing territory across much of Iraq and Syria, the Iraqi government requested U.S. military support to help fight the terrorist group.

Since ISIS was driven from its last Iraqi stronghold in 2017, U.S. officials have consistently maintained that since there are currently no combat operations authorized in Iraq, there are no combat troops in the country.

But they acknowledge a small number of U.S. Special Operations Forces serving as advisers and trainers occasionally accompany Iraqi counterterrorism forces on combat missions against Islamic State fighters.


In Washington on Friday, Pentagon officials said they expected the troop levels in Iraq to remain at their current level of about 2,500, and that the role of some U.S. forces would be redefined.

But while giving Mr. al-Kadhimi temporary political cover, a reclassification of U.S. forces rather than a drawdown likely won’t satisfy the militias and political parties calling for a withdrawal of all troops, Iraqi officials say.

“Changing their name from combat forces to trainers and advisers — we consider it as an attempt at deception,” said Mohammad al-Rubai’e, political spokesman for Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the biggest Iranian-backed militias, which maintains 16 seats in the Iraqi parliament.

Those militias and many Iraqi politicians linked to them contend that the real purpose of U.S. forces in Iraq is to counter Iran, not threats from the Islamic State.


Iran this year has carried out increasingly sophisticated attacks, including drone strikes, on U.S. targets in Iraq, and the United States has launched calibrated retaliatory strikes.

“The dialogue with the United States is how can we think about maintaining a presence that is useful without incurring a high political cost,” Thanassis Cambanis, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, an American think tank, said during a visit to Iraq this week.

“The interests of the two sides don’t really align because the United States isn’t going to see it in its interests to continue to be attacked by these militias that the government of Iraq can’t curtail.”


Iran denies responsibility for the attacks, according to Iraqi officials, but its leaders have also made clear that they intend to retaliate against the United States for killing General Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi deputy commander overseeing militias.

The United States over the past year has increasingly focused on force protection, withdrawing from vulnerable bases in Iraq to consolidate its presence on three Iraqi military installations.

While the Islamic State is no longer able to capture territory, the group continues to launch destabilizing attacks such as bombings in markets that point out weaknesses in Iraqi security forces.

“Within Iraq, ISIS is defeated as a significant military threat but its radical ideology lives on,” said Mark Kimmitt, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general and former State Department official who now consults for American firms doing business in Iraq.

“Deradicalization, however, is not part of the U.S. mission.”

The American occupation of Iraq convulsed the country, not only toppling its dictator in 2003, but disbanding the army, hollowing out its government institutions and helping returned Iraqi exiles create a political system along sectarian and ethnic lines that haunts the nation to this day.

For years that system has awarded government ministries to political parties that siphon off money meant for public services has contributed to barely functioning hospitals, ongoing electricity cuts, millions of jobless Iraqis and a government that cannot pay its bills.

Infrastructure such as electricity that barely functioned after more than a decade of U.S.-led sanctions before the war has never been fully repaired.


Battles against Al Qaeda, Iraq’s civil war and the fight against the Islamic State further damaged infrastructure.

With falling oil prices last year, Iraq found itself having trouble meeting its huge government payroll, which has tripled since 2004 as political parties in charge of ministries create jobs for loyalists.

“We are now talking about repairing damage from the ex-regime, Al Qaeda, ISIS and the damage induced by the ruling political class,” said Luay al-Khatteeb, a technocrat former electricity minister.

“If this chaos continues it will lead to the destruction of the country.”


Jane Arraf reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.

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Re: IRAQ

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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

"U.S. Combat Role in Iraq to Conclude This Year, Biden Says"


Ken Thomas, Michael R. Gordon

26 JULY 2021

WASHINGTON—President Biden said that the U.S. combat mission in Iraq would conclude by the end of 2021, but the U.S. military would continue to work with Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State militant group.

“We are not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” Mr. Biden said Monday at the start of a White House meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.


The president said U.S. military forces would “be available to continue to train, to assist, to help and to deal with ISIS.”

The announcement is intended to help Mr. Kadhimi blunt criticism from hard-line Shiite politicians at home, who have been demanding that the approximately 2,500-strong American force leave Iraq.

U.S. officials, however, say it won’t lead to a significant reduction in the number of American troops in the country nor fundamentally alter their mission.

The focus of the American deployment has long been on advising and training Iraqi troops, which mainly takes place within the confines of large bases.


The Iraqi military has been supported by American air power in carrying out their fight against cells of Islamic State militants and Iraqi officials have signaled they expect this to continue.

“We don’t need any more fighters because we have those,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein told The Wall Street Journal last week.

“What do we need?"

"We need cooperation in the field of intelligence."

"We need help with training."

"We need troops to help us in the air.”

A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraqi 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but then had to contend with Sunni insurgents and Iranian-backed militias.

The U.S. regained the initiative on the battlefield after President George W. Bush sent a surge of reinforcements to the country in 2007 and U.S. troops forged an alliance with Sunni tribes, and the level of violence gradually subsided.


However, talks between the Obama administration and then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on maintaining a modest, several-thousand-strong U.S. military presence to continue the training of Iraq’s forces faltered.

American troops left the country in 2011.

Following the departure of the American troops, the training and performance of Iraqi forces began to deteriorate and Washington’s ability to encourage the appointment of qualified and nonsectarian Iraqi commanders waned.

The Islamic State group seized Mosul in June 2014, and President Barack Obama sent U.S. forces back to Iraq to advise the Iraqi military.

A small number of American and European special-operations troops were also deployed to carry out raids in Iraq and Syria, and the U.S. and allied powers carried out punishing airstrikes against Islamic State militants.

With the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate in March 2019, the U.S. stopped accompanying Iraqi forces on the battlefield, concentrated on mentoring Iraqi forces and encouraged North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations to expand their training efforts in the country.

But the American presence has been a political target for Shia groups, including militias backed by Iran who have fired rockets and carried out drone attacks at Iraqi bases where American troops are located.

Mr. Biden has carried out two retaliatory attacks against militia facilities in Iraq and Syria.

Shiite hard-liners say that nothing short of the departure of all U.S. troops will satisfy their demands.


On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Mr. Biden would discuss “a change of mission” during the meeting and said the number of U.S. troops would be “driven by what is needed for the mission over time.”

Ms. Psaki said it was a natural next step that would allow the U.S. to coordinate with the Iraqi leadership in fighting ISIS and threats from Iranian proxies.

“This is a shift in mission, it is not a removal of our partnership or our presence or our close engagement with Iraqi leaders,” she said.

While the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq divides the Shiite community, Sunni and Kurdish politicians generally welcome their presence, a senior Iraqi national security official told American officials in closed door meetings last week, according to an Iraqi official who was present.

An April report by the Pentagon’s inspector general, which drew on classified information, estimated that 10,000 Islamic State fighters operate in Syria and Iraq.

“ISIS remains entrenched in rural areas throughout Iraq and retains freedom of movement,” the report noted, adding that the group has carried out suicide bombings in Baghdad.

The struggle against Islamic State isn’t entirely military, the report noted.

It found that the slow pace of economic reform and reconstruction by the Iraqi government helped Islamic State’s effort to recruit more fighters.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled in Iraq in October, adding to the sensitivity of the issue of American troops.


Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

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Re: IRAQ

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NEWSWEEK

"Iraq Resistance Warns It's Ready to Expel U.S. by Force at End of Year"


Tom O'Connor

19 NOVEMBER 2021

A group of Iraqi militias has issued a warning that they were prepared to take up arms against the U.S. military presence in Iraq if U.S. troops stayed in the country past the upcoming year's end deadline for combat operations revealed over the summer by President Joe Biden.

In a statement issued Friday and shared with Newsweek, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission, an umbrella of paramilitary groups aligned with the pro-Iran Axis of Resistance opposed to the U.S. footprint in the region, said its members were "closely monitoring the extent of commitment to the outcomes of the so-called strategic dialogue round" that took place between Washington and Baghdad in July.

The message went on to say that the council "did not believe in the seriousness of the occupation and its commitment" to withdrawing combat troops from Iraq according to the established timeline, but was itself "committed to giving the Iraqi negotiator an opportunity to expel the American occupation from our pure land through diplomatic means."

But since then, the commission said it had "not yet seen any manifestations of withdrawal despite that only 42 days separate us from 12/31/2021."

"On the contrary, we have observed that the brazen American occupation increased its numbers and equipment in its bases in Iraq," the commission said, "and we even heard official and semi-official statements from officials of the American states of evil about their intention not to withdraw from the country under the pretext that there was a request from Baghdad to do so, at a time when we did not see any response or denial from the Iraqi government about these clumsy statements!"

The militia said its forces were prepared to meet such an outcome with action.


"We affirm that the weapons of the honorable resistance, which have been talked about a lot in the past days, and some insisted on embroiling them in recent political rivalries, will be ready to dismember the occupation as soon as the moment comes and the deadline ends after twelve o'clock in the evening of 12/31/2021," the statement said.

The ongoing presence of U.S. troops going on four years after Iraq declared victory over the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has remained a dividing factor in the country, especially as clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqi militias have escalated in recent years.

Frictions peaked at the turn of 2019 to 2020 as deadly exchanges culminated in the U.S. slaying of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad International Airport.

Shortly after this event, Iraqi lawmakers voted for the expulsion of foreign forces from the country, and Soleimani's successor, Esmail Qaani, has further vowed to push U.S. forces from the region.

Rocket strikes have continued to target U.S. positions and President Joe Biden has twice retaliated, striking sites in both Iraq and neighboring Syria, where Iran-backed groups deployed against ISIS and other jihadis have also targeted U.S. troops tasked with a similar mission.

Domestic politics have also proven an incendiary factor as of late.

Last month, the country held its sixth election since the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled longtime leader Saddam Hussein.

The results saw strong gains for influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a disappointing turnout for paramilitary blocs whose supporters took to the streets to challenge the vote, leading to clashes with security forces in which at least two demonstrators were killed.

Upon the backdrop of these events, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi's residence was targeted by small, explosives-rigged drones in an apparent assassination attempt that prompted universal condemnation, including from the U.S., Iran and the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Those seeking a timely withdrawal of U.S. forces have accused Kadhimi of being soft on Washington, while those critical of Tehran have accused Iran of exerting pressure on the Iraqi leader through the use of its local partners.

The U.S., for its part, has offered no sign it planned to pull out of Iraq completely as it did in Afghanistan in August, and the definition of "combat" forces has remained somewhat unclear as the Pentagon has maintained for years that its presence in the country was solely for training and advising Iraq personnel to fight ISIS.

Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East Dana Stroud reaffirmed the Biden administration's commitment to the December 31 deadline during an interview aired Tuesday by Al Jazeera, but she also said that U.S. troops would continue to support Iraqi forces as long as Baghdad welcomed them in the country.


"We are still committed to advising and assisting the Iraqi forces in their fight, and we'll be there so long as they would like our help," she said.

She also said that "the United States remains absolutely committed to Iraq, the security of Iraq, the sovereignty of Iraq and the ability of Iraqi citizens to live in peace and safety."

On Sunday however, Iraqi member of parliament and the Al-Sadiqoon bloc that represents the powerful, influential Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia Hassan Salem referred to Iraq's resistance elements as the true defender of the nation, even if this bothered rivals such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, Israel and the monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.

"The Islamic resistance factions are the only guarantee of Iraq's sovereignty," Salem tweeted Sunday, "and they are a thorn in the path of the U.S.-British-Zionist Gulf project that targets the country."

And the following day, as the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission published its position, the head of an Iraqi militia targeted twice this year in strikes order by Biden in response to attacks on U.S. military positions doubled down on the warning.

Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada Secretary-General Abu Alaa al-Walai tweeted Friday: "With the approaching hour of decisiveness and a major confrontation, the Islamic Resistance, the Sayyid al-Shuhada Brigades, announces the opening of the door to belonging and volunteering to its ranks and calls on our resistant Iraqi people and the resistance factions to raise the level of readiness in preparation for the decisive and historic confrontation with the American occupation on 12/31/2021 after 12:00 a.m."

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Re: IRAQ

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

"As ISIS Resurges, US is Drawn Back Into the Fray"


Jane Arraf and Ben Hubbard

25 JANUARY 2022

BAGHDAD, Iraq — An audacious attack on a prison housing thousands of former ISIS fighters in Syria.

A series of strikes against military forces in neighboring Iraq.

And a horrific video harking back to the grimmest days of the insurgency that showed the beheading of an Iraqi police officer.


The evidence of a resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is mounting by the day, nearly three years after the militants lost the last patch of territory of their so-called caliphate, which once stretched across vast parts of the two countries.

The fact that ISIS was able to mount these coordinated and sophisticated attacks in recent days shows that what had been believed to be disparate sleeper cells are re-emerging as a more serious threat.

“It’s a wake-up call for regional players, for national players, that ISIS is not over, that the fight is not over,” said Kawa Hassan, Middle East and North Africa director at the Stimson Center, a Washington research institute.

“It shows the resilience of ISIS to strike back at the time and place of their choosing.”

On Tuesday, fighting between a Kurdish-led militia backed by the United States and the militants spread from the embattled Sinaa prison in northeastern Syria to surrounding neighborhoods, swelling into the biggest confrontation between the American military and its Syrian allies and ISIS in three years.

The U.S. military joined the fight after the militants attacked the makeshift prison in the city of Hasaka, trying to free their fellow fighters.

The Islamic State now controls about a quarter of the prison and is holding hundreds of hostages, many of them children detained when the caliphate that their families had joined fell in 2019.

The United States has conducted airstrikes and provided intelligence and ground troops in Bradley fighting vehicles to help cordon off the prison.

Even as skirmishing was taking place around the prison Tuesday, fighting involving ISIS fighters also broke out about 150 miles away, in Rasafa, about 30 miles outside the city of Raqqa.

The militants’ show of force was not limited to Syria.

In Iraq, around the same time as the prison attack began, ISIS fighters stormed an army outpost in Diyala Province, killing 10 soldiers and an officer in the deadliest attack in several years on an Iraqi military base.

Gunmen approached the base from three sides late at night while some of the soldiers slept.

The attack raised fears that some of the same conditions in Iraq that allowed for ISIS’s rise in 2014 were now making room for it to reconstitute.

In December, insurgents kidnapped four Iraqi hunters in a mountainous area of northeast Iraq, including a police colonel.

The militants beheaded the police officer, and then released the gruesome video.

The attacks in Iraq, conducted by ISIS sleeper cells in remote mountain and desert areas, have highlighted a lack of coordination between Iraqi government forces and the Peshmerga, Kurdish forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region.

Many of the attacks take place in disputed territory claimed by both the Iraqi Kurdish government and the central government.

Ardian Shajkovci, director of the American Counterterrorism Targeting and Resilience Institute, said many of the militants arrested in attacks since the group lost the last of its territory three years ago appeared to be younger, and from families with older members tied to ISIS.

“If so,” he said, “this is a new generation of ISIS recruits, changing the calculus and threat landscape in many ways.”

Iraq has struggled to deal with tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens who are relatives of ISIS fighters and have been collectively punished and placed in detention camps — now feared to be breeding grounds for radicalization.

Corruption in Iraqi security forces has left some of their bases without proper supplies and allowed soldiers and officers to neglect their duties, contributing to the collapse of entire army divisions that retreated in 2014 rather than fight ISIS.

In Syria on Tuesday, the Syrian Democratic Forces said that they had conducted sweeps in Hasaka neighborhoods near the prison, killing five ISIS fighters who were wearing suicide belts.

The militia said that on Monday it had freed nine prison employees held by the Islamic State and killed another nine militants, including two suicide bombers, in raids around the prison.

An S.D.F. spokesman, Farhad Shami, said that so far, 550 detainees who took part in the siege had surrendered.

The militia has also been negotiating with the ISIS leaders in the prison.

There are an estimated 3,500 detainees in the overcrowded prison.

As many as 700 minors are also there, some 150 of them citizens of other countries who had been taken to Syria as young children when their parents left home to join the insurgency.

An estimated 40,000 foreigners made their way to Syria to fight or work for the caliphate.

The prison siege has highlighted the plight of thousands of foreign children who have been detained for three years in camps and prisons in the region, abandoned by their own countries.

The prison inmates include boys as young as 12.

Some were transferred to the prison after they were deemed too old to remain in detention camps that held families of suspected Islamic State fighters.

The Syria director for Save the Children, Sonia Khush, said those detaining the children were responsible for their safety.

But she also pointed a finger at foreign governments that have refused to repatriate their imprisoned citizens.

“Responsibility for anything that happens to these children also lies at the door of foreign governments who have thought that they can simply abandon their child nationals in Syria,” Ms. Khush said.

At its height, in 2014, ISIS controlled about a third of Iraq and large parts of Syria, territory that rivaled Britain in size.

When the last piece of it, in Baghuz, Syria, fell three years ago, women and young children were put in detention camps, while those believed to be fighters were sent to prison.

The main detention camp for the families, Al Hol, is squalid, overcrowded and dangerous, lacking sufficient food, medical services and guards.

Amid the chaos, an increasingly radicalized segment of detainees has emerged to terrorize other camp residents.


When the boys at the camps become teenagers, they are usually transferred to Sinaa prison, where they are packed into overcrowded cells.

Food, medical care and even sunlight are in scarce supply.

But their plight gets harder still when they turn 18.

Even though none of the young foreigners have been charged with a crime, they are placed with the general prison population, where wounded ISIS fighters sleep three to a bed.

Outside the prison, the U.S. troops that have once again engaged in battle with ISIS fighters are part of a residual force of the American-led military coalition that was largely pulled out of the country in 2019.

There are currently about 700 American troops in the region, operating mostly from a base in Hasaka, and another 200 near Syria’s border with Jordan.

The Pentagon said that the armored Bradley fighting vehicles put in place to back the Kurdish-led S.D.F. forces were being used as barricades while the Kurdish militia tightened its cordon around the prison.

A coalition official said the vehicles had been fired at and had returned fire.

“We have provided limited ground support, strategically positioned to assist security in the area,” John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters in Washington.

Jane Arraf reported from Baghdad, and Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Re: IRAQ

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The Hill

"Iraq moving to remove US-led military coalition, prime minister says"


Story by Brad Dress

6 JANUARY 2024

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Friday said he would set up a dialogue to discuss the removal of the U.S. military presence in his country after an American strike killed an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad on Thursday.

In an address, al-Sudani said the agreement under which American troops are based in Iraq states the equal sovereignty of both countries, which was violated by the U.S. strike.


“We have repeatedly emphasized that in the event of a violation or transgression by any Iraqi party, or if Iraqi law is violated, the Iraqi government is the only party that has the right to follow up on the merits of these violations,” al-Sudani said in remarks shared by his office.

“We affirm our firm and principled position in ending the existence of the international coalition after the justifications for its existence have ended,” he added.

The prime minister said he was in the process of setting up a bilateral dialogue with the U.S. to discuss the removal of some 2,500 American troops in his country.

“It is a commitment that the government will not back down from, and will not neglect anything that would complete national sovereignty over the land, sky, and waters of Iraq,” he said.

The U.S. strike on Thursday killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, the leader of an Iranian-backed militia group Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN), after landing near a security headquarters in Baghdad.

HHN is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a network of Iranian proxy groups and militias in Iraq.

Iranian-backed groups have repeatedly attacked U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea since the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war.

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday the U.S. is in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government to defeat the U.S.-designated terrorist group ISIS, but he stressed forces will take action to protect themselves.

“This was a necessary, proportionate act,” Ryder said, adding Iraq is an “important and valued partner,” which the U.S. seeks to maintain good ties with.

Al-Sudani, who is closely aligned with Iranian-backed militias, on Friday condemned the U.S. for the strike and said the Popular Mobilization Forces are “an official presence affiliated with the state.”

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Re: IRAQ

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The Wall Street Journal

"Iraq Prime Minister Says U.S.-Led Military Coalition in Iraq Is No Longer Needed"


Story by Michael R. Gordon

19 JANUARY 2024

Iraq’s prime minister said the U.S.-led military coalition that has been helping his country fight Islamic State militants is no longer needed, though he still wants strong ties with Washington.

“We believe the justifications for the international coalition have ended,” Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani told The Wall Street Journal, as the war in Gaza frays Iraqi relations with Washington.


Sudani didn’t set a deadline for the departure of the coalition, which was formed in 2014 to mentor and support Iraqi forces in regaining control of their country after Islamic State militants seized swaths of northern and western Iraq.

Nor did Sudani close the door to a role for U.S. troops advising Iraqi forces to remain in the country under a new bilateral relationship that he said should follow.

But in an interview Tuesday during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sudani expressed broad dissatisfaction with American policy on the Gaza conflict.

The West had turned a blind eye toward the plight of the Palestinians before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, he said, calling for increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end what he described as genocide.

While Sudani condemned the frequent attacks by Iranian-backed militias on American forces in his country, he also assailed a recent U.S. drone strike in Baghdad against a militia leader as a “clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”

U.S. officials say that some adjustments to the international coalition, which includes about 900 troops from two dozen countries along with a contingent of 2,500 American troops, may be in order.

But they have also warned that a premature withdrawal of American and foreign troops would add to the instability in the Middle East by reducing international support for the still-deficient Iraqi forces and providing an opportunity for Islamic State to attempt a comeback.

Sudani said that he was no longer worried that the departure of the coalition would undermine Iraqi military capabilities.

“There is no cause for concern, as we have capable security forces that can control all areas of Iraq,” he said.

“The Iraqi-Syrian border is under complete control.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council said the U.S. was prepared to discuss the future of the U.S.-led coalition with Sudani but didn’t say when such talks might begin or how quickly that coalition’s role might be adjusted or phased out.

“We agree that after a decade since the formation of the Coalition to Defeat ISIS and its success over that period there is merit to begin discussions for a transition to bilateral arrangements,” the NSC spokesman said in an emailed comment late Wednesday night.

“ISIS remains a threat today but we recognize that the threat has evolved.”

The call for the departure of the U.S.-led coalition is a shift for Sudani, who said last year in an interview with the Journal that foreign troops were still necessary to train and assist Iraqi units in countering Islamic State, though not to participate in combat.

The change underscores the heightened pressure on Sudani since the start of the Gaza war from hard-liners in Iraq, many backed by Tehran, who have stepped up calls for U.S. troops to leave.

But it also reflects the desire of some Iraqi officials and commanders to maintain a robust relationship with the U.S. military, which can provide capabilities and resources that Iraqi forces can’t match on their own.

By calling for replacing the coalition with a bilateral relationship with Washington, Sudani can highlight his role in negotiating a departure of foreign forces while keeping an as-yet undefined military relationship with the U.S. that could include keeping American troops indefinitely, analysts said.

“He wants to shore up his flank with Iran and their proxies but at the same time he recognizes that his government can’t continue without support from the U.S. and its coalition,” said a former senior U.S. official.

The Iraqi leader is walking a political tightrope between Tehran and Washington, the official added, and “he is trapped in a bad place.”

Farhad Alaadin, Sudani’s diplomatic adviser, said Iraq wasn’t seeking a rapid departure of American forces.

“The goal is not to get the U.S. out,” he said.

“We need to agree to establish a timetable for changing the coalition to a bilateral relationship.”

Sudani was mostly unknown in the West when he took office in 2022 and has sought to broaden his outreach to the Biden administration and other Western governments in hopes of attracting investment and aid, as well as to counter criticism that his government is too closely aligned with Iran.

His room to maneuver has been limited by Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful Shia cleric who can mobilize thousands of protesters and armed militia members against the government.

Sudani has also worked to retain support of the Coordination Framework, a group of mostly Shiite parties and factions that backed him for prime minister and which is supported by Iran.

The bloc controls the most seats in parliament and several key ministries in his cabinet.

The small American deployment in Iraq is a far cry from the 170,000 troops the U.S. military had in the country when it battled Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in 2007 during the nearly eight-year American occupation.

Yet the modest U.S. military presence, which operates mostly within the confines of large bases in the country, has become a cornerstone of the U.S. security posture in the region.

U.S. forces provide vital logistical support for the approximately 900 American troops in neighboring Syria who are working with local partners battling remnants of Islamic State.

They also advise the Iraqi Security Forces on finding targets, the use of artillery, air operations, logistics and command and control in their continuing fight against the terrorist group.

For example, Iraq’s air force relies on reconnaissance by the U.S.-led coalition to find targets, according to a Pentagon report issued last year.

Beyond that, the effort to strengthen ties between the American defense establishment and its Iraqi counterpart is part of an effort to counter Tehran’s long-held agenda of trying to pressure the U.S. military to leave the Middle East.

The departure of the U.S.-led coalition could also diminish support for the Iraqi military in other ways.

More than $300 million was appropriated by Congress for the 2023 fiscal year to equip and train Iraqi forces for their counter-Islamic State missions.

“It’s imperative that the U.S. maintain at least a minimum security presence in Iraq to mentor, advise and train the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service and the upper levels of the Iraqi Security Forces in general,” said David Witty, a retired Army Special Forces colonel who advised the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service.

“They are still not fully capable and remain reliant on the U.S. and other coalition partners for some support.”

In August, senior Iraqi security officials visited the Pentagon, and the two sides issued a joint statement that called for convening a “higher military commission” to discuss the future of the U.S.-led coalition based on the threat from Islamic State, operational requirements and the capability of Iraqi forces.

U.S. and Iraqi officials were days away from convening those high-level talks when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, upending those plans.

Ten days later, Iranian-backed militias broke a six-month truce with the Americans and began firing mortars and launching drones, rockets, and ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Since Oct. 17, U.S. and coalition forces have been attacked at least 55 times in Iraq.

American officials have been reluctant to convene talks to discuss the future of the U.S.-led coalition while American troops are under fire from Iraqi militias.

Many of the armed drones and rockets have been intercepted, but U.S. officials say Sudani’s government and military forces should do more to stop the attacks.

Sudani has been pressing to begin the talks, and raised the matter with national security adviser Jake Sullivan in a meeting at Davos on Monday, according to Iraqi officials.

Iraq’s relations with Iran have been strained in recent days after Tehran fired ballistic missiles Monday at what it said was an Israeli intelligence base in Northern Iraq, which Baghdad denied.

Sullivan and Sudani talked about the Iranian attack and about “enhancing cooperation as part of a long-term, sustainable defense partnership,” the White House said in a statement.

“We agree on halting all attacks, and this is our objective,” Sudani said of the militias.

“Also, we call for stopping the coalition’s drone flights across Iraq.”

U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein, and their presence in Iraq has been a politically challenging issue ever since.

In 2011, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then-President Barack Obama failed to negotiate an agreement providing for the continued deployment of U.S. forces, which led to the withdrawal of all American troops and an end to their training mission that year.

That was followed by the emergence of Islamic State and its capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2014.

Thousands of American advisers returned later that year to help the Iraqis fight Islamic State, which had taken over large parts of northern and western Iraq.

Faced with a common enemy, the U.S. military and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq initially stayed out of each other’s way.

But as Islamic State faced defeat, Iranian-backed militias began to attack U.S. troops in 2019.

As the two sides traded blows and tensions escalated, then-President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike in January 2020 that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian paramilitary leader, as he was leaving the Baghdad airport.

The strike prompted the Iraqi parliament to pass a resolution demanding that foreign troops leave.

To mollify Iraqi opinion, the U.S. declared an end to its combat mission in 2021 and made clear its role was limited to supporting Iraq’s forces.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, David S. Cloud at david.cloud@wsj.com and Elena Cherney at Elena.Cherney@wsj.com

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Re: IRAQ

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Business Insider

"Iran ups the ante against US, proxies strike Iraq military base with ballistic missiles"


Story by rrommen@insider.com (Rebecca Rommen)

22 JANUARY 2024

* US personnel in Iraq are undergoing traumatic brain injury evaluations.

* The evaluations follow a missile barrage launched by Iran-back militias on the Al-Asad airbase.

* Regional tensions have been escalating, with this militia's actions mirroring the Houthis' aggression.


US personnel in Iraq are undergoing traumatic brain injury evaluations after Iranian-backed militias launched a barrage of ballistic missiles and rockets at the Al-Asad airbase in western Iraq on Saturday, according to a statement from the US Central Command (CENTCOM).

The press release stated that multiple ballistic missiles and rockets were launched at about 6:30 p.m. Baghdad time on January 20.

"Most of the missiles were intercepted by the base's air defense systems while others impacted on the base," per CENTCOM.

CENTCOM said that damage assessments are ongoing, and several US personnel are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries.

At least one Iraqi service member was reportedly wounded.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed militia group, claimed responsibility for firing the missiles that were launched from inside the country.

The attack is believed to be the largest among more than 140 incidents since mid-October, signifies a pattern of Iranian-backed militia groups targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria, ABC News reports.

The attacks are seen by some as acts of solidarity with Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, mirroring similar actions by Houthi militants in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden against commercial shipping.

Unlike previous attacks primarily using Iranian-made drones and rockets, Saturday's assault involved more powerful ballistic missiles and represents an escalatory move, per ABC News.

Iran also backs the Houthis and have triggered retaliatory strikes from the US.

The Pentagon has labeled its strikes on Houthi missiles as "defensive" measures.

The Houthis rebels' attacks on Red Sea shipping sought to support a ceasefire in Gaza.

The heightened tensions between Iran-backed militias and the US in Iraq follow a US military drone strike in Baghdad on January 4, which targeted a senior leader of one such militia, the Guardian reports.

There are 2,500 US troops still stationed in Iraq, part of the ongoing mission to counter the Islamic State terror group.

Another 900 US troops are deployed to Syria to prevent a resurgence by the Islamic State, the Pentagon reports.

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Re: IRAQ

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IRAQ IS KIDDING ITSELF IF IT THINKS IT HAS ANY SOVEREIGNTY THAT JOE BIDEN WOULD BE CONCERNED ABOUT NOT VIOLATING ...

The Hill

"Iraq says US ‘blatantly’ violated its sovereignty with strikes on Iran-linked targets"


Story by Brad Dress

25 JANUARY 2024

Iraq accused the U.S. of violating its territorial sovereignty after the Pentagon carried out another series of strikes this week targeting Iranian-backed militia groups in the country.

Yehia Rasool, spokesperson for Iraq’s commander in chief, said the strikes were a “clear determination to harm security and stability in Iraq” and the attacks damaged ongoing talks on the American presence in the country.

“This unacceptable act undermines years of cooperation, blatantly violates Iraq’s sovereignty, and contributes to an irresponsible escalation,” Rasool said in a Wednesday statement.

“It occurs at a time when the region is already grappling with the danger of expanding conflict, the repercussions of the aggression on Gaza, and the consequences of the immoral war of extermination faced by the Palestinian people.”

The U.S. said Tuesday it struck three sites used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah, in response to recent attacks on American troops in Iraq and Syria.

Iranian-backed militia groups have attacked the U.S. more than 150 times since the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October.

U.S. Central Command said the strikes hit the headquarters, storage and training locations for rocket, missile and drone launches used by Kataib Hezbollah.

The strikes hit near two towns close to the capitol of Baghdad, according to Iraq.

The eruption of conflict between the U.S. and Israel and Iran and its proxies across the Middle East has sparked concerns in Iraq that the country will be dragged back into war.

After a U.S. strike killed a senior Iranian-backed militia leader in Baghdad at the beginning of January, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said he is weighing the possibility of removing the U.S. from Iraq over the escalation.

Around 2,500 American troops operate in Iraq, at the invitation of the Iraqi government, to counter the extremist Islamist group ISIS.

Iraq also condemned Iran for a January strike on what it claimed was an Israeli spy base in the Iraqi city of Erbil — but al-Sudani is closely aligned with Iranian-backed militia groups and has reserved most of his ire for Washington.

Rasool, the Iraqi spokesperson, said Wednesday the U.S. is “sliding into condemnable and unjustified aggressive actions against Iraqi territory and national sovereignty.”

“We call on the international community to fulfill its responsibility in supporting peace and security, preventing all violations threatening Iraq’s stability and sovereignty,” Rasool said.

“We will treat these operations as acts of aggression and take necessary actions to preserve the lives and dignity of Iraqis on their land that became safe and stable due to the sacrifices of our people.”


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Re: IRAQ

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The Washington Post

"U.S. strikes on militias, some backed by Iran, rile key ally in Iraq"


Story by Kareem Fahim, Mustafa Salim, Missy Ryan, Abigail Hauslohner

12 FEBRUARY 2024

KARBALA, Iraq — U.S. officials say recent airstrikes in Syria and Iraq have dealt a withering blow to a dangerous adversary: Iran.

They’ve punished Iran’s notorious Quds Force and allied militias for lethal attacks on U.S. troops, they say, and sent a potent message of deterrence.


But in Iraq, the strikes have provoked a very different reaction — and placed its government, a key regional partner to the United States, in a predicament.

Many here have seen in them the latest U.S. assault on Iraq’s independence, a threat to fragile stability and a willful disdain of a complex reality: While many of the country’s mainly Shiite militias are supported by rival Iran, they’re also deeply intertwined with Iraq’s society, politics and government.

After a U.S. strike last week in the middle of Baghdad killed a Kataib Hezbollah militia leader, a spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister lashed out, saying U.S. forces “jeopardize civil peace, violate Iraqi sovereignty, and disregard the safety and lives of our citizens.”

There was more anger at a funeral Wednesday in the holy city of Karbala for 17 other slain militiamen, attended by local politicians, religious leaders and members of the country’s military, where relatives emphasized the militiamen’s service to Iraq.

Mohammed Qadim Abed Hamza held a portrait of his 60-year-old father, Kadhim Abed al-Hamza, killed in the U.S. strikes.

The United States, he said, wants to “weaken” Iraqi militias formed to defeat the Islamic State extremist group nearly a decade ago.

His father joined at the beginning of that fight, at the urging of Iraq’s highest Shiite religious leader.

So did Mohammed, now 29, and three of his brothers.

Pressure is building on Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to confront the United States and to accelerate negotiations aimed at winding down the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

For the Biden administration, Iraq’s reaction illustrates the challenges of sustaining a security partnership with Baghdad while containing the rapidly spreading fallout from ally Israel’s war in Gaza and fending off attacks from groups aligned with the Iraqi government.


Attacks on U.S. installations in Iraq and elsewhere began to surge in October, as Iranian-backed groups said they would retaliate for Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

In Iraq, the attacks disturbed a rare period of calm that had held since the fall of 2022, when Sudani took office.

On Jan. 28, three U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack on a base in Jordan near the Syrian border.

Five days later, on Feb. 2, the Biden administration struck targets in Syria and in the western Iraqi towns of al-Qaim and Akashat.

For a time, there was hope that the escalation could be contained.

The United States had chosen not to strike Iran directly.

And Kataib Hezbollah, one of the Iranian-backed militant groups, pledged on Jan. 30 to suspend its attacks on American troops to avoid “embarrassment” to the Iraqi government.

But then came the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad last week that killed Abu Baqir al-Saedi, a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander.

Two days later, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the umbrella group that includes Kataib Hezbollah, announced it would resume attacks on U.S. targets.


The Americans “do blame Iran, and they talk about Iran,” said Farhad Alaaldin, a foreign affairs adviser to Sudani.

“Yet they carry out attacks in Iraq.”

“Iraq regards America as a strategic partner and not an enemy,” he said.

“We are afraid that pushing Iraq to the verge is the wrong strategy.”

While the groups the United States has targeted are backed by Iran, they also belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iraqi umbrella group for militias that drew thousands of volunteers to fight the Islamic State.

The groups were formally incorporated into the government in 2016.

PMF members receive salaries, pensions, weapons and other benefits and answer to Iraq’s prime minister.

Saedi illustrated the overlapping roles.

As a leader in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked group formed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he headed Syria operations for the militia and was responsible for “directly planning and participating in attacks” on U.S. troops, according to U.S. Central Command.

But in Iraq, Saedi was also “basically a government employee,” said Hussein Mounes, a member of the parliament here and the head of Huquq, a political party associated with Kataib Hezbollah.

He had a badge identifying him as a member of the PMF and even a “government car,” Mounes said.

“His wife, his kids, all are Iraqis going to Iraqi schools,” he said.

“The problem with the United States is, they consider whoever is defending the country as an Iranian.”

U.S. officials do at times struggle with the distinctions.

After Saedi was killed, the Pentagon’s press secretary pushed back against the notion that the U.S. military had targeted a figure with an official Iraqi government role.

“As we conduct these strikes, we are very focused on Iranian-backed proxy groups and not PMF,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.

Asked to clarify, he added: “as I understand it, the folks that we’re striking are not part of the PMF.”

The drone strike on Tower 22 in Jordan caused the first deaths of U.S. service members in Iraq or Syria since 2020.

U.S. officials say their response targeted two groups: Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which they say are responsible for attacks on U.S. facilities since Oct. 7.

But the leader of another group targeted in the U.S. strikes, the Tafuf Brigade, which also belongs to the PMF, said men under his command had not participated in attacks against the United States.

The leader, Qassim Muslih, told The Washington Post that Washington had made a mistake in striking his group in Akashat.

“I believe there is inaccurate information by the CIA and the U.S. military intelligence,” he said, speaking as the last guests left the funerals in Karbala.

The dead, he said, included nurses who worked in a medical unit, a chef, a baker and security guards.

Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at Chatham House who has studied Iraq’s militias, said the Tafuf Brigade, while a military force, was not known to be on the front line of attacks against the United States.

A senior U.S. defense official, asked about the U.S. strikes on Akashat, said the area was affiliated with Iranian-backed groups that had taken part in attacks against U.S. facilities.

“It’s a legitimate target,” the official said.

U.S. officials say Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has less control over militias in Iraq than it did under former chief Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in early 2020.

They now believe the IRGC can set parameters for the militias, but under Soleimani’s replacement, Ismail Qaani, they operate more autonomously.

Iraq was still living with the consequences of the Trump administration’s decision to kill Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a founder of Kataib Hezbollah and deputy leader of the PMF, Mansour said.

Their deaths gave rise to a “resistance dynamic” in Iraq, with militias increasingly deploying violence for domestic political bargaining or to press for the exit of the United States.

To the militias, he added, “there is a logic to this violence,” which fell short of declaring war.

But the United States didn’t see it that way.

If there were unspoken ground rules, he said, the killing of the three Army reservists, all members of a Georgia-based unit, breached them.

Mounes, the member of parliament, called the dynamic a “deterrence equation” but said Iraq’s “resistance factions” felt their demands had not been met and the equation had outlived its usefulness.

“We are talking about war and weapons,” he said.

“Not a romantic relationship.”

Sudani, the prime minister, has been left to cope with the fallout, including U.S. strikes in his nation’s capital and intensifying demands that American troops withdraw.

“There are some complexities in Iraqi society, which we understand,” the senior U.S. defense official said.

“We understand that Prime Minister Sudani, who we consider a partner, has to navigate those complexities,” the official continued.

“But that doesn’t really change that obligation” for the Iraqi government to prevent violence against U.S. personnel there.

“We have been obsessing over a divorce between the Iraqi security structure and these militias for a decade,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), said in an interview last week.

“My sense is that the Iraqi government has just been willfully reliant on the militias despite our repeated offers to help them become independent.”

Iraqi analysts and officials said there is little chance Sudani would confront the militias, given his weak position but also his government’s emphasis on providing Iraqis with stability and economic development.

Some of the most powerful militias are also keen to avoid a clash that would threaten their growing political and economic clout.

The Iraqi government “just wants this to be over with,” Mansour said.

Before the latest escalations, he said, Sudani was poised “to achieve something quite important: to choreograph this American withdrawal” — an outcome that also interested the Biden administration, he added.

Formal negotiations over the withdrawal of U.S-led coalition troops started in January.

The Biden administration has not said what specific outcomes it would like to see from those talks, but Washington is likely to push for a continued military presence of some kind.

The challenge since the beginning of the Gaza war is that the administration “cannot be seen to be withdrawing and retreating at a moment of weakness.”

“This is all planned out,” he said.

“They want a beautifully choreographed scene where they shake hands.”

Ryan and Hauslohner reported from Washington.

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