Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi will meet US President Donald Trump for the first time in Washington on Thursday, with the presence of American troops in the country at the top of his agenda.
The meeting comes as attacks on American targets by pro-Iranian fighters have been on the rise, and with Tehran and Washington competing for influence in Iraq, the gulf between pro-Iranian factions and Baghdad’s US-friendly premier is growing.
In May, Kadhemi took office, faces challenges from factions of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a coalition of Iraqi Shiite paramilitary groups with close ties to Iran.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “armed groups not under the full control of the prime minister have impeded our progress,” calling for them to “be replaced by local police as soon as possible.”
On being asked about the plan for cutting the 5,000 US troops now in Iraq, Pompeo said that he had no numbers and urged people “not to focus on that.”
A senior administration official said, “There are no hard fast timelines, and there are no hard fast numbers but that certainly would be part of the discussion, as we evaluate what Iraq security requirements are, and what the United States believes it can do”.
Kadhemi has angered armed groups by seizing border posts where they ran lucrative smuggling networks and imposed taxes on traders.
Attacks have risen in recent weeks, with the Iraqi army reporting another rocket attack on Tuesday evening targeting Baghdad airport, where US troops are based. The projectile did not cause damage or casualties, the army said.
In June, two Katyusha rockets hit a military base, housing US forces, near the Iraqi capital Baghdad without casualties.
Earlier in May, an American soldier and a British soldier, as well as one US contractor, were killed after rockets hit an Iraqi military base north of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Baghdad and Tehran must be “state-to-state and not via militias,” the source quoted Kadhemi as saying, adding that groups that “draw their strength from Iran” had bombed Iraqi targets and embezzled money.
In January, the attack at the Baghdad International Airport also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).
The Iranian attack came after a US drone attacked on January 3 a convoy at Baghdad International Airport that killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.
(With inputs from agency)