Iraqi Resistance Threatens to Target US Interests in Case of No Deal on Troops Pullout

By Staff, Agencies

Iraqi resistance groups threatened to target the American interests in the Arab country if Prime Minister Mustafa al-Khadhimi’s ongoing visit to Washington fails to produce an agreement on US forces’ withdrawal from the Iraqi soil.

The statement was released on Thursday -- concurrent with al-Khadhimi’s meetings with American officials at the White House -- by the resistance groups that form part of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi or Popular Mobilization Units [PMU] anti-terror force, Beirut-based al-Mayadeen television network reported.

The PMU, which includes resistance groups such as Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba, has been integrated into the Iraqi Defense Forces as a result of its successful and indispensable contribution to the country’s defeating Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Takfiri terrorist ‘ISIS/ISIL’ group] in late 2017.

The groups considered the expulsion of US troops to be Baghdad’s top priority, urging al-Khadhimi to accord primacy to a law approved by the parliament that mandates the forces’ withdrawal.

The Iraqi parliament passed the law in January shortly after a US drone strike assassinated Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps [IRGC] and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the PMU’s second-in-command, in Baghdad alongside many others. The attack came while General Soleimani was paying an official visit to the Iraqi capital.

“If an agreement on the expulsion of US forces from Iraq is not concluded in Washington, we reserve the right to target America’s interests in Iraq," the statement warned.

“We do not expect al-Kadhimi to return to his own country from Washington with new expansionist plots and scenarios devised by the United States,” the statement added.

The Iraqi resistance groups also weighed in on a recent agreement that enabled full normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and ‘Israel’.

It condemned the development and cautioned, “We confront treacherous rulers and regimes that are considered to be cheap tools for prolonging the ‘Israeli’ occupation of Palestinian territories.”