U.S. President Donald Trump, The White House, Washington, March 22, 2019. Photo: Reuters
WASHINGTON,— U.S. President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Baghdad on Sunday after Iraq’s parliament called on U.S. troops to leave the country, and the president said if troops did leave, Baghdad would have to pay Washington for the cost of the air base there.
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
Trump said that if Iraq asked U.S. forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, “we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”
Iraq’s parliament on Sunday backed a recommendation by the prime minister that all foreign troops should be ordered out, responding to the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader in Baghdad.
A special session of parliament passed a resolution saying that the Shi’ite-led government, which is close to Iran, should cancel its request for assistance from a U.S.-led coalition.
However, one Sunni Muslim lawmaker said Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities fear the expulsion of the U.S.-led coalition will leave Iraq vulnerable to an insurgency, undermine security, and further empower its Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias.
Most Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers boycotted the session, and the 168 lawmakers present were just three more than the quorum.
Qassem Soleimani, the 62-year-old commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in the U.S. air strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. The attack, ordered by President Donald Trump, sent tensions between the United States and Iran soaring, with Iranian officials promising revenge.
Lawmakers from the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, which the U.S. State Department said on Friday it would designate a foreign terrorist organization, were carrying portraits of Soleimani and Muhandis.
“There is no need for the presence of American forces after defeating Daesh (Islamic State),” Ammar al-Shibli, a Shi’ite lawmaker, said before the session. “We have our own armed forces which are capable of protecting the country.”
The United States was disappointed in the decision by Iraq’s parliament on Sunday to recommend that all foreign troops be ordered out of the country after the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader, the State Department said.
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