US pulls nonessential staff from Iraq amid Mideast tensions
The US on Wednesday ordered all nonessential government
staff to leave Iraq, and Germany and the Netherlands both suspended their
military assistance programs in the country in the latest sign of tensions
sweeping the Arabian Gulf region over still-unspecified threats that the Trump
administration says are linked to Iran.
Recent days have seen allegations of sabotage targeting oil
tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a drone attack by Yemen’s
Iranian-allied Houthi rebels, and the dispatch of US warships and bombers to
the region.
At the root of this appears to be President Donald Trump’s
decision a year ago to pull the US from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers,
embarking on a maximalist sanctions campaign against Tehran. In response,
Iran’s supreme leader issued a veiled threat Tuesday, saying it wouldn’t be
difficult for Iran to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels.
The movement of diplomatic personnel is often done in times
of conflict, but what is driving the decisions from the White House remains
unclear. A high-ranking British general said there was no new threat from Iran
or its regional proxies, something immediately rebutted by the US military’s
Central Command, which said its troops were on high alert, without elaborating.
Last week, US officials said they had detected signs of
Iranian preparations for potential attacks on US forces and interests in the Middle
East, but Washington has not spelled out that threat, and an alert on the
website of the US Embassy in Baghdad said that all nonessential, nonemergency US
government staff were ordered to leave Iraq right away under State Department
orders.
The US in recent days has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln
aircraft carrier strike group to the Gulf region, plus four B-52 bombers.
Germany’s military said it was suspending training of Iraqi
soldiers due to the tensions, although there was no specific threat to its own
troops in Iraq. Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff said Germany was
“orienting itself toward our partner countries” though there are “no concrete
warnings of attacks against German targets.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer
expressed concern over the tensions and said it welcomes “any measure that is
aimed at a peaceful solution.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said
the German government has not reduced its embassy staff in Iraq or Iran.
In the Netherlands, state broadcaster NOS said its 50-person
military mission in Iraq was halted “until further orders,” quoting a Defense
Ministry spokesman as saying he couldn’t elaborate on the threats. It said the
Dutch forces primarily train Kurdish forces fighting the ISIS militants.
The remarks about Iran’s nuclear program by Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came Tuesday night in Tehran at an iftar, the
traditional dinner Muslims have when breaking their daily fast during Ramadan.
His comments first focused on playing down the risk of a wider conflict with
America.
He told senior officials that his country won’t negotiate
with the US, calling such talks “poison,” but he also said, “Neither we, nor
them is seeking war. They know that it is not to their benefit,” according to
the state-run IRAN newspaper.
Tehran is threatening to resume higher enrichment on July 7
if no new nuclear deal is in place, beyond the 3.67% permitted by the current
deal between Tehran and world powers.
Iranian officials have said that they could reach 20%
enrichment within four days. Though Iran maintains its nuclear program is for
peaceful purposes, scientists say the time needed to reach the 90% threshold
for weapons-grade uranium is halved once uranium is enriched to around 20%.
“Achieving 20% enrichment is the most difficult part,”
Khamenei said, according to the newspaper. “The next steps are easier than this
step.”
It was a telling remark from the supreme leader — Iran is
not known to have enriched beyond 20% previously and it’s unclear how far
Tehran is willing to go in this process. Khamenei has final say on all matters
of state in Iran.
On Tuesday, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels launched a
coordinated drone attack on a critical oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s
biggest rival in the region. It was the latest incident to shake global energy
markets, as authorities allege oil tankers anchored off the coast of the United
Arab Emirates were targeted by sabotage. Benchmark Brent crude prices remained
around $71 a barrel in early trading Wednesday.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are at war with Saudi Arabia and
are believed by the West to receive weapons from Iran, said they launched seven
drones targeting vital Saudi installations. That included two pumping stations
along its critical East-West Pipeline, which can carry nearly 5 million barrels
of crude a day to the Red Sea.
Anwar Gargash, the minister of foreign affairs for the
United Arab Emirates, told reporters in Dubai that the Saudi-led coalition will
“retaliate hard” for attacks on civilian targets.
Saudi Aramco, the government-controlled oil company, said it
temporarily shut down the pipeline and contained a fire, which caused minor
damage to one pumping station. It added that Saudi Aramco’s oil and gas
supplies were unaffected.
An image from San Francisco-based Planet Labs Inc. that The
Associated Press examined Wednesday shows Saudi Aramco’s Pumping Station No. 8
outside of the town of al-Duadmi, 330 kilometers (205 miles) west of the
kingdom’s capital, Riyadh.
The photo, taken after the attack, shows two black marks
near where the East-West Pipeline passes by the facility — marks that weren’t
in images from Monday. The facility otherwise appeared intact, corroborating in
part Saudi Arabia’s earlier comments. The website TankerTrackers.com, whose
analysts monitor oil sales on the seas, first reported about the black marks.
Details remain unclear around alleged acts of sabotage to
four oil tankers, including two belonging to Saudi Arabia, off the coast of the
UAE’s port of Fujairah. Satellite images seen by the AP from Colorado-based
Maxar Technologies showed no visible damage to the vessels, and Gulf officials
have refused to say who might be responsible.
The MT Andrea Victory, one of the alleged targets, sustained
a hole in its hull just above its waterline from “an unknown object,” its owner
Thome Ship Management said in a statement. Images of the Norwegian ship, which
the company said was “not in any danger of sinking,” showed damage similar to
what the firm described.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss
an ongoing investigation, has said the other three showed damage as well.
The unspecified threats reported by US last week from Iran
and its proxy forces in the region targeting Americans and American interests
contradicted remarks by British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, a senior officer in the
US-backed coalition fighting the ISIS group. He said Tuesday that “there’s been
no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.”
Later, in a rare public rebuttal of an allied military
officer, US Central Command said Ghika’s remarks “run counter to the identified
credible threats” from Iranian-backed forces. In a statement, Central Command
said the coalition in Baghdad has increased the alert level for all service
members in Iraq and Syria.