Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s media office yesterday expressed surprise at comments by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s regarding Iranian-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization paramilitary units.
“No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters,” al-Abadi’s media office said in a statement citing a source close to the prime minister.
Tillerson on Sunday said it was time for Iranian-backed militias and their Iranian advisers who helped Iraq defeat the Islamic State (IS) to “go home.”
Photo: Reuters
He made the comment in Saudi Arabia and later in Qartar, where he pushed for Saudi Arabia and Iraq to unite to counter growing Iranian assertiveness.
“Those fighters need to go home,” Tillerson said. “Any foreign fighters need to go home.”
Trained and armed by Iran, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization forces often supported Iraqi government units in the fight against the militants who were effectively defeated in July when a US-backed offensive captured their stronghold Mosul.
They are paid by the Iraqi government and officially report to the prime minister, but some Arab Sunni and Kurdish politicians describe these militias as a de facto branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp.
However, al-Abadi’s office said the forces were under the authority of the Iraqi government.
“Popular Mobilization are Iraqi patriots,” it said in the statement.
Tillerson had also denounced Iran’s “malign behavior” and urged nations of the region and elsewhere, notably Europe, to join the US to halt any business they do with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
In Riyadh for the inaugural meeting of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq Coordination Council, Tillerson told Saudi King Salman and al-Abadi that the nascent partnership between their countries held great promise for Iraq’s reconstruction after devastating battles to wrest territory from the IS group and its independence from foreign influence.
“We believe this will in some ways counter some of the unproductive influences of Iran inside of Iraq,” he said at a news conference with Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir after the council meeting.
US officials are stepping up encouragement of a new axis that unites Saudi Arabia and Iraq as a bulwark against Iran’s growing influence from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.
Amid the push for that alliance, the Iraqi government is struggling to rebuild recently liberated Islamic State strongholds and confronts a newly assertive Kurdish independence movement.
After his talks in Riyadh, Tillerson flew to the Qatari capital of Doha, a direct route that has been closed to commercial airlines since June when the now-five-month old crisis between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates erupted, ostensibly over terrorism financing.
Qatar and Bahrain are home to major US military bases in the Middle East, the al-Udeid Air Base near Doha and the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet in Manama.
Tillerson has attempted to facilitate a dialogue through talks with the feuding parties as well as supporting a Kuwaiti mediation effort, but has thus far been unsuccessful. He renewed those calls, but allowed that progress seemed unlikely.
“We cannot force talks between parties who are not ready to talk,” he said.
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