Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said during an interview with Al-Jazeera on 3 April that Baghdad rejects the US military presence in Iraq.
During the interview, the Iraqi prime minister affirmed that the ISIS presence in the country has come to an end, adding that what Iraq needs from Washington is training expertise and a security relationship, not “a combat presence.”
Sudani told Al-Jazeera that prior to forming the current Iraqi government, he had held talks with members of the Coordination Framework (CF) – a political coalition of Shia parties, many of which are linked to the country’s Iran-backed armed factions, which include the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).
During these talks, Sudani and the CF representatives discussed several sensitive challenges and how to overcome them, among them being the “problem of the armed factions and the presence of [Washington’s] coalition.”
According to Sudani, the CF leaders gave him “a mandate that he and his government negotiate and define the nature of the relationship with the [US] coalition, with the aim of reaching a clear-cut agreement.”
In an event that an agreement is reached, Sudani said that “there will be no justification for the existence of any weapon other than the weapon of the state,” suggesting that Iraq will accept neither a US military presence nor a presence of armed factions.
Reinforcing this, Sudani said that Iraq does not want to be an arena for “settling scores” between Tehran and Washington.
The prime minister also denied that there was any interference from Iran in the government formation process. Nonetheless, Sudani affirmed his rejection of any type of Iranian interference.
Iran is “a neighboring country that supported the political process after 2003, and its relations are good with all Iraqi components,” Sudani said.
Sudani’s comments to Al-Jazeera are in full contradiction with what he said during a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) interview in January this year. Sudani expressed to WSJ at the time his approval of an indefinite US military presence in Iraq, which he said was needed to fully eradicate ISIS.
“We think that we need the foreign forces … elimination of ISIS needs some more time,” WSJ quoted Sudani as saying on 15 January.
In 2020, following the illegal US assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, which took place in Iraq and constituted a major violation of the country’s sovereignty, the Iraqi parliament voted on a resolution calling for the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
The resolution specifically called for the cancellation of Iraq’s formal request for US military assistance against ISIS, which was issued in 2014. Washington completely rejected this resolution.
On 7 March, Washington’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a visit to the country that US forces will “remain in Iraq.”