Eurasia Press & News
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s visit to the White House is largely focused on negotiations, which started in May, on resetting the United States military mission in Iraq.
President Trump met with Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the Iraqi prime minister, at the White House on Thursday, continuing months of negotiations between the two governments over the presence of American troops in the country.
Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. al-Kadhimi, a former intelligence chief, culminated two days of high-level gatherings between senior American and Iraqi officials that covered a range of security, energy, economic and health issues. But a central focus of the prime minister’s visit is the negotiations, which started in May, on resetting the United States military mission in Iraq.
“We will be discussing military,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re also involved in many oil projects and oil development within their country. And I think we’ve had a very, very good relationship since we started. We’re down to a very small number of soldiers in Iraq now.”
There are about 5,200 American troops in Iraq, whose main missions are counterterrorism and training Iraqi forces. Some of these forces also support about 500 U.S. troops in neighboring Syria.
Both leaders have emphasized their desire for troop reductions, but the details of how that would happen are murky. The Iraqis have said they want assistance from the Americans without a sizable military presence, while the Trump administration, fixated on the threat of Iranian influence, has been advised to keep a small number of troops on the ground.
Mr. Trump has signaled that he wants to withdraw all U.S. forces from the region, from both Iraq and Syria. “We’re bringing them home from Syria. We’re bringing them home from Iraq,” he said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday. “These endless wars, they never stop.”
On Thursday, Mr. al-Kadhimi looked on as the president reiterated his desire to remove troops from the area.
“So at some point, we obviously will be gone,” Mr. Trump said. “We look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there, and hopefully Iraq can live their own lives and they can defend themselves, which they’ve been doing long before we got involved.”
In a meeting with journalists after the White House gathering, Mr. al-Kadhimi reaffirmed the need for continued American military assistance to help fight remnants of the Islamic State.
“We need the support of the United States,” he said. “The war against ISIS is over, but sleeper cells for ISIS and other terrorist groups are still there.”
The prime minister sidestepped the question of how long and precisely how many U.S. troops should stay in Iraq, saying conditions on the ground would dictate that. But he underscored that the role of American forces in the country was already shifting.
“We definitely don’t need combat troops in Iraq,” Mr. al-Kadhimi said. “But we do need training.”
The prime minister, who assumed his post in May after widespread antigovernment protests and amid the coronavirus pandemic and persistent joblessness, is largely viewed as a transitional leader to steer his country through a period of major economic and social upheaval.
His appointment also came during a political backlash that surged after a U.S. drone strike killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, a top Iranian officer, at Baghdad International Airport in January. That resulted in a vote by Iraq’s Parliament demanding that all U.S. troops leave the country.
On a call with reporters held before the visit, senior administration officials stressed that there were “no hard and fast timelines, and there are no hard and fast numbers” on when any reduction of troops would happen. But U.S. commanders have already pulled back hundreds of troops from several Iraqi bases, consolidating them at half a dozen locations in the country.
The Pentagon has also advised Mr. Trump that a small contingent — about 2,500 troops or so — should remain to advise and assist the Iraqi government in its fight against pockets of Islamic State fighters and to act as a bulwark against Iranian influence in Iraq, where skirmishes between the United States and Iran have played out on the country’s soil.
Other members of the 29-country American-led military coalition in Iraq have already cut their numbers in half, to about 1,200 troops, largely because of the pandemic, which has suspended most training.
“We don’t want to maintain a huge number of soldiers forever in Iraq. We want to get smaller,” Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, told an online security conference last week, noting that Iraqi forces were largely ready to take on the fight by themselves.
The Pentagon is reluctant to keep more than the absolute minimum of troops in Iraq because they have been attacked by Iranian-backed militias. An attack on an Iraqi base in March killed three soldiers of the American-led military coalition in Iraq, two of them Americans, and wounded 14.
“Everyone’s saying the numbers will come down,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who met with Mr. al-Kadhimi and his top aides this week.
In an interview with The Associated Press before his departure from Baghdad, Mr. al-Kadhimi said that the cooperation should “reflect the changing nature of terrorism’s threat,” including continued training and weapons support.
On Thursday, he also praised the close intelligence sharing between United States and Iraqi forces as a major factor in the recent successes against the Islamic State.
In addition to discussion of the American military presence, the strategic talks have also delved into energy, health and the economy.
The Americans want to help expand Iraq’s oil and gas industry, at least partly to help wean Iraq off Iranian energy. Iraq, which has the world’s fifth-largest proven crude oil reserves, often relies on Iran for gas and electricity.
Dan Brouillette, the energy secretary, said on Wednesday that several American companies, including Honeywell and GE, had signed commercial partnership agreements worth up to $8 billion with the Iraqi energy and oil ministries. As part of the package, Chevron announced an agreement that would allow the company to develop a large oil field in southern Iraq.
Mr. al-Kadhimi will wrap up his visit to Washington on Friday with a meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Iraqi officials said.
