Iran has been pushing for a long time to push western power out of Iraq. Western power made promises that Iraq wouldn’t become proxy battleground but it is slowly becoming that with the Iranian / American proxy attack on each-other in the region.
America has over 5,000 troops stationed in the country making it one of the cornerstone of its middle eastern power base.
but will this recent attack hurt relations or can Western power convince Iraq that Iran is the real threat.
BAGHDAD — American oil workers were fleeing Iraq on Friday, as fears grew of war between the United States and Iran. At sermons in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, worshipers chanted, “Death to America!”
And in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad, where antigovernment protesters have gathered for months, a banner went up with a pointed message to both Iran and the United States: “Keep your conflicts away from Iraq.”
Iraqis awoke to the news on Friday that Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, the architect of Iran’s dominating influence over Iraq, had been killed in an American drone strike near the Baghdad airport, along with several others.
Even before the shock of the brazen killing wore off, Iraqi factions were weighing their responses. Militias with ties to Iran vowed bloody revenge. The prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, condemned the attack as “an outrageous breach to Iraqi sovereignty” and said Parliament would meet to discuss the future of the United States presence in Iraq.
Iraqi leadership has already started talking about demanding we leave. I guess if we refuse their demands that will show the world once and for all where we really stand on freedom and democracy.
Which Iraq the 34% Sunnis who backed Saddam and ISIS or the 64% Shia who backed Maliki and Shiite militia that help lead to ISIS? Or the 15% Kurds who were gassed under Saddam and then in 2017 killed and ran out of Kirkuk mostly orchestrated by the now ■■■■ stain Soleimani?
There is no unity in these groups and they will be killing each other regardless of whether we stay or leave and we should have left a long time ago.
Ya we saw in 2014 what a bunch of military hardware and money did to protect the second biggest city in Iraq - Mosul from falling to a whopping 100 all black wearing Sunni thugs (ISIS). The army dropped all those expensive weapons and ran leaving ISIS with a massive load of military equipment.
And this is the point they ran because Mosul is mostly Sunni. ISIS was greeted in Mosul as liberators the army and the government to the people of Mosul were the oppressors. Nothing is going to change, there has been a holy war going on between the Shia and Sunni since the fall of Saddam.
In general the Ottoman’s had the Middle East mostly figured out.
It’s when they collapsed and the French and the British started dividing it out without regards to ethnic and religious dividing lines that the place really went to complete ■■■■■