On the streets of Baghdad, Iraqis say they are not worried about the prospect of war in the region.CreditCreditKhalid Al-Mousily/Reuters
The LAST thing Iraq needs right now is to suffer ANOTHER war….
A country that went there a decade ago has finally found some normalcy ….
The American war against it’s former leader destabilised the entire Middle East and allowed Iran to expand its influence…
Now with the Trump anti-Iran Trump national security advisor John Bolton itching to pick a fight with Iran?
Iraqi’s are joining others in urging calm from Iran…..
They see the ghost’s of the Bush war start-up against their country….
In the Trump administration’s recent bellicose talk about Iran, Iraqis hear eerie echoes of the months just before the American invasion of Iraq.
Iraqi officials, wary of another war on their land, say they have warned armed groups tied to Iran to refrain from taking any action that could provoke American retaliation.
“The last two days there have been continuous meetings with all the groups to convey the Iraqi government’s message that if anyone does something, it is their responsibility, not Iraq’s,” said Sayed al-Jayashi, a senior member of Iraq’s National Security Council.
“The Iraqi government is responsible for protecting American interests in Iraq,” he added. “We will become the enemy of anyone who does something against American interests.”
In the past two weeks, the Trump administration has said, repeatedly and publicly, that Iran and Arab Shiite militias aligned with it were planning to strike American troops in the region, and that the threat had increased recently.
In response, the administration dispatched an aircraft carrier, long-range bombers and an antimissile battery to the Persian Gulf and updated plans for a war with Iran. On Wednesday, the State Department ordered a number of its “nonemergency” personnel in Iraq to leave the country.
The United States has not revealed any evidence supporting its assessment of an increased threat, though on Wednesday officials described what they said were photos of missiles being loaded onto Iranian boats. Allies of the United States have said that while Iran and its confederates may pose a danger, it is unclear whether there is a serious threat against American forces.
The claims have led many in the region to draw parallels to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in 2003 based on false claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
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Iraq, he said, cannot “be the place where America and Iran settle their scores.”…
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Mr. Trump has long called the Iraq war a mistake, and has said that American forces should withdraw from the Middle East and other parts of the world. But his national security adviser, John R. Bolton, has advocated military strikes against Iran and regime change there. As a State Department official in 2003, he was seen as one of the more hawkish voices on Iraq.
On the streets of Baghdad, many Iraqis say that if there is an armed conflict between Iran or its proxies and the United States, it is more likely to take place in the Gulf rather than on Iraqi soil. Unlike the Iraq of 2003, Iraq today is an American ally….
Note…
There are about 5,000 US troop’s still in Iraq….There are more troops from other NATO countries also on the ground…
image….Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters