US signals it is open to sending more troops to support NATO's mission in Iraq

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/18/politics/us-troops-iraq/index.html

The Pentagon opened the door to the possibility of sending more American troops to the Middle East as part of a newly expanded NATO training mission to support Iraqi forces and ensure that ISIS does not rise again.

"The US is participating in the force generation process for NATO Mission
Iraq and will contribute its fair share to this important expanded mission,"

Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Jessica L. McNulty told CNN. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke about the mission with his NATO counterparts during a meeting with defense ministers on Thursday.

Late Thursday night, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby clarified that there are "no plans" to send more US troops into Iraq itself. However, US troops could also support the mission from outside the country, a defense official told CNN.

"We support NATO's expanded mission in Iraq and will continue to do so, but there are no plans to increase U.S. force levels there," Kirby said on Twitter.

Such a move would have been a reversal of the previous administration's policy which reduced the number of troops in the country to 2,500 following former President Donald Trump's election defeat. The Biden administration is also weighing whether to stick to a May deadline to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan.

At a press conference Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the NATO mission would increase in size from 500 personnel to about 4,000.

"The US and its partners in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS remain committed to ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS, and the Department looks forward to continued consultations with Iraq, NATO, and the Global Coalition going forward," McNulty added.

Austin "welcomed the expanded role" of the NATO mission in Iraq, according to a readout of the discussions provided by the Pentagon. He "expressed confidence that all of the work done to date with the Iraqi government and security forces will lead to a self-sustainable mission."
Stoltenberg stressed the importance of the NATO mission to prevent the resurgence of ISIS.

"Not so long ago, ISIS controlled territory as big as the United Kingdom and roughly 8 million people. They have lost that control," Stoltenberg said. "But, ISIS is still there. ISIS still operates in Iraq, and we need to make sure that they're not able to return. And we also see some increase in attacks by ISIS. And that just highlights the importance of strengthening the Iraqi forces."

The increase in NATO forces would be incremental and comes at the request of the Iraqi government, he added.

Trump's acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller touted the withdrawal of troops prior to Biden taking office as a sign of the mission's success, saying, "The drawdown of US force levels in Iraq is reflective of the increased capabilities of the Iraqi security forces. Our ability to reduce force levels is evidence of real progress."

In early February, Austin announced a global force posture review, in which military leaders would examine US troop levels around the world, including the "military footprint, resources, strategy and missions."
Austin stressed the importance of alliances and partnerships as part of the review.

"From Afghanistan and the Middle East, across Europe, Africa and our own hemisphere, to the wide expanse of the Western Pacific, the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with allies old and new, partners big and small," Austin said. "Each of them brings to the mission unique skills, knowledge and capabilities. And each of them represents a relationship worth tending, preserving and respecting. We will do so."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that no final decisions or recommendations have been made as part of the global force posture review.

 

[Last Monetarist]

Slap in the face of all the Trump supporters who said that the US' warmongering days are here again... oh wait.

My concern when Trump lost was that a lot of people will lose interest in politics, given the sheer exhaustion of all the last 4 years, and allow the leeches in the State Department to re-assert the old neo-con policies in ways that are nebulous but significantly more dangerous for the world.

 

[KingKhanWC]

Slap in the face of all the Trump supporters who said that the US' warmongering days are here again... oh wait.

My concern when Trump lost was that a lot of people will lose interest in politics, given the sheer exhaustion of all the last 4 years, and allow the leeches in the State Department to re-assert the old neo-con policies in ways that are nebulous but significantly more dangerous for the world.

Its Biden, he's a warmonger, see his history.

Iraq wants the Americans out, its pariliament voted for this. Yanks need to go back home, they are occupying a land where everyone hates them. Yet we still have people fooled into thinking US are the good guys lol

 

[Manunited18]

Its Biden, he's a warmonger, see his history.

Iraq wants the Americans out, its pariliament voted for this. Yanks need to go back home, they are occupying a land where everyone hates them. Yet we still have people fooled into thinking US are the good guys lol

Come back Trump! All is forgiven.

 

[The Bald Eagle]

Iraq plans to 'end presence' of US-led coalition forces, PM says​

The Iraqi government is working to end the presence of foreign troops from the US-led coalition against ISIS, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani said on Thursday.

Mr Al Sudani's announcement followed an escalation in attacks between the US military and Iran-backed Shiite militias, including air strikes on three militia bases in central Iraq this week that killed one fighter and wounded 18 other people.

The militias have been launching almost daily drone and missile attacks against US troops in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, to which the US military has retaliated with air strikes that have so far killed 16 militiamen.

The Iraqi government has denounced the attacks by the militias as “terrorist acts” and the US strikes as an “infringement to Iraqi sovereignty”.

An Iraq-Spain Joint Committee meeting in mid 2024 will be "an important station to push the relations forward", he said.

Mr Sanchez visited Spanish troops at a military base located in Baghdad's high security Green Zone, where he thanked them on behalf of Spanish society for their "efforts and sacrifices in favour of international security and stability".

"In Iraq, Spain has demonstrated for many years now our solid commitment to something that seems to have been questioned in recent years: multilateralism," he said.

Iraq endured decades of war, UN-imposed economic sanctions under Saddam, and political and security instability after the 2003 invasion. The war with ISIS left large areas of the north and west in ruins, and millions of Iraqis are still without access to clean water, adequate electricity supply and proper health care.

Source : The National News

 

[The Bald Eagle]

A good decision by Iraqi PM. It's good to kick the parasite out from your place of existence.

Iraq plans to 'end presence' of US-led coalition forces, PM says​

The Iraqi government is working to end the presence of foreign troops from the US-led coalition against ISIS, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani said on Thursday.

Mr Al Sudani's announcement followed an escalation in attacks between the US military and Iran-backed Shiite militias, including air strikes on three militia bases in central Iraq this week that killed one fighter and wounded 18 other people.

The militias have been launching almost daily drone and missile attacks against US troops in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, to which the US military has retaliated with air strikes that have so far killed 16 militiamen.

The Iraqi government has denounced the attacks by the militias as “terrorist acts” and the US strikes as an “infringement to Iraqi sovereignty”.

An Iraq-Spain Joint Committee meeting in mid 2024 will be "an important station to push the relations forward", he said.

Mr Sanchez visited Spanish troops at a military base located in Baghdad's high security Green Zone, where he thanked them on behalf of Spanish society for their "efforts and sacrifices in favour of international security and stability".

"In Iraq, Spain has demonstrated for many years now our solid commitment to something that seems to have been questioned in recent years: multilateralism," he said.

Iraq endured decades of war, UN-imposed economic sanctions under Saddam, and political and security instability after the 2003 invasion. The war with ISIS left large areas of the north and west in ruins, and millions of Iraqis are still without access to clean water, adequate electricity supply and proper health care.

Source : The National News

 

[I think therfore I am]

A good decision by Iraqi PM. It's good to kick the parasite out from your place of existence.

True however they have permanent bases in Saudi, Kuwait and Bahrain

 

[FearlessRoar]

Iraq's al-Harir airbase, which hosts U.S. and international forces, was targeted by an armed drone on Friday, Iraqi Kurdistan's counterterrorism service said in a statement.

The statement did not elaborate on whether the attack caused casualties or infrastructure damage.

Source: Reuters

 

[FearlessRoar]

A number of US military personnel have been injured in a missile attack on an airbase in western Iraq.

The US military's Central Command said an Iran-backed militia targeted the Al Asad airbase, which hosts American troops, with ballistic missiles and rockets on Saturday evening.

An unspecified number of US personnel were "undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries".

At least one Iraqi service member was wounded in the attack.

The statement said most missiles were intercepted but some evaded air defences and hit the base, adding that an assessment of the damage is ongoing.

Source: BBC

US personnel injured in missile attack on Al Asad airbase in Iraq

Missiles and rockets were fired at the airbase by an Iranian-backed militia, the US military says.

www.bbc.com

 

[FearlessRoar]

The head of Iraq’s pro-Iran Hashed al-Shaabi alliance on Sunday demanded the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from the country following deadly strikes.

“They targeted administration offices, a (Hashed) hospital, they struck forces tasked with protecting the borders,” Faleh al-Fayyad said at a funeral ceremony for members of the group killed in the US strikes.

“Targeting the Hashed al-Shaabi is playing with fire,” he warned.

On Friday US strikes in the west of Iraq struck positions manned by pro-Iran groups, in response to an attack in January on a base in Jordan that killed three US soldiers.

The Hashed al-Shaabi, mainly pro-Iran paramilitaries now integrated into Iraq’s regular security forces, said 16 of its fighters were killed in Friday’s strikes and 36 people wounded.

“We urge the prime minister to do everything in his power to defend the sovereignty and dignity of Iraq. And this can only be done with the departure of all coalition forces from Iraq,” Fayyad said.

The US-led coalition was set up in 2014 to fight the ISIS group that had seized swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria, and Hashed had contributed to the defeat of the extremists in Iraq.

There are roughly 2,500 US troops deployed in Iraq and about 900 in Syria as part of the coalition.

Tensions between the US and Iraqi governments have deepened in recent months after Washington carried out previous strikes in response to a flurry of attacks on US-led troops since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October.

Washington and Baghdad opened talks on the future of the US-led troop presence late last month after repeated demands from Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani for a timetable for their withdrawal.

Source: Al Arabiya

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/02/04/Pro-Iran-Hashed-chief-demands-withdrawal-of-US-led-coalition-from-Iraq

 

[aboveandbeyond]

This is all part of greater israel. The expansion of the Israel.

 

[FearlessRoar]

US will respond to this week’s Iran-backed attack on troops in Iraq: General​

The top US military general vowed Friday to respond to an attack that targeted American troops in Iraq this week, which the Pentagon attributed to Iran-backed militias.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown could not say why the attack occurred, which was the first of its kind in months.

US troops were last attacked at Rumalyn Landing Zone in Syria on April 21 and near Al-Assad Airbase in Iraq on April 22. Prior to that, the last reported attacks were in February.

“The key part is we’re going to continue to defend ourselves, and we’re going to respond appropriately at a time in place of our choosing,” Brown said at the Aspen Security Forum.

US and Coalition forces at Iraq’s Al-Assad Airbase successfully intercepted two drones on Tuesday. No troops were injured, but there was damage to the base.

Last week, the top Pentagon official for Middle East policy and the US ambassador to Baghdad met with Iraqi officials to follow up on American troop withdrawal talks. These discussions are expected to continue in Washington next week.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/united-states/2024/07/19/us-will-respond-to-this-week-s-iran-backed-attack-on-troops-in-iraq-general

 

[FearlessRoar]

US piles pressure on Iraq to resume Kurdish oil exports, sources say​

US President Donald Trump’s administration is piling pressure on Iraq to allow Kurdish oil exports to restart or face sanctions alongside Iran, eight sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

A speedy resumption of exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region would help to offset a potential fall in Iranian oil exports, which Washington has pledged to cut to zero as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

The US government has said it wants to isolate Iran from the global economy and eliminate its oil export revenues in order to slow Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Iraq’s oil minister made a surprise announcement on Monday that exports from Kurdistan would resume next week. That would mark the end of a near two-year dispute that has cut flows of more than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Kurdish oil via Turkey to global markets.

Reuters spoke to eight sources in Baghdad, Washington and Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, who said that mounting pressure from the new US administration was a key driver behind Monday’s announcement.

All of the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Iran views its neighbor and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amidst sanctions. But Baghdad, a partner to both the United States and Iran, is wary of being caught in the crosshairs of Trump’s policy to squeeze Tehran, the sources said.

Trump wants Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to sever economic and military ties with Iran. Last week, Reuters reported that Iraq’s central bank blocked five more private banks from dollar access at the request of the US Treasury. Iraq’s announcement on export resumption was hurried and lacked detail on how it would address technical issues that need to be resolved before flows can restart, four of the eight sources also.

Iran wields considerable military, political and economic influence in Iraq through its powerful Shia militias and the political parties it backs in Baghdad. But the increased US pressure comes at a time when Iran has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its regional proxies.

Curb smuggling​

With the pipeline taking Kurdish crude to the Turkish port of Ceyhan closed since 2023, the smuggling of Kurdish oil to Iran by truck has flourished. The US is urging Baghdad to curb this flow, six of the eight sources said. Reuters reported in July that an estimated 200,000 barrels per day of cut-price crude was being smuggled from Kurdistan to Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey by truck. The sources said the exports remained at around that level.

“Washington is pressuring Baghdad to ensure Kurdish crude is exported to global markets through Turkey rather than being sold cheaply to Iran,” said an Iraqi oil official with knowledge of the crude trucking shipments crossing to Iran.

While the closure of the Turkish pipeline has prompted an uptick in Kurdish oil smuggling via Iran, a larger network that some experts believe generates at least $1 billion a year for Iran and its proxies has flourished in Iraq since al-Sudani took office in 2022, Reuters reported last year.

Two US administration officials confirmed the US had asked the Iraqi government to resume Kurdish exports. One of them said the move would help to dampen upward pressure on oil prices.

Asked about the administration’s pressuring of Iraq to open up Kurdish oil exports, a White House official said: “It’s not only important for regional security that our Kurdish partners be allowed to export their own oil but also help keep the price of gas low.”

There has been close military cooperation between authorities in Kurdistan and the United States in the fight against ISIS. Trump’s restoration of the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran was one of his first acts after returning to office in late January. In addition to efforts to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero, Trump ordered the US treasury secretary to ensure that Iran can’t use Iraq’s financial system.

Trump also came into office promising to lower energy costs for Americans. A sharp drop in oil exports from Iran could drive up oil prices, and with it the gasoline price worldwide. The resumption of Kurdish exports would help offset some of the loss to global supply of lower Iranian exports, but would cover only a fraction of the more than 2 million bpd of crude and fuel that Iran ships. However, Iran has proven adept in the past at finding means to circumvent US sanctions on its oil sales.

Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said the restart of exports from Kurdistan could help increase global oil supplies at a time when output was disrupted from other regions, such as Kazakhstan, where exports have dropped this week following a Ukrainian drone attack on a major pipeline pumping station in southern Russia.

“At this point in time, I believe the market has adopted a relatively neutral but nervous stance on crude oil prices,” he said.

Hurdles to restart​

The pipeline was halted by Turkey in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad $1.5 billion in damages for unauthorized exports between 2014 and 2018.

There are still unresolved issues around payment, pricing and maintenance, the sources told Reuters. Two days of talks in the Kurdish city of Erbil this week failed to reach agreement, sources said. The federal government wanted exports to restart without making commitments to the KRG on payments and without clarity on the payment mechanism, a source familiar with the matter said.

“We can’t do that. We need clear visibility on guarantees,” the source said.

Oil companies working in Kurdistan also have questions over payments.

Executives from Norwegian firm DNO told analysts on Feb. 6 that before agreeing to ship oil through the pipeline to Ceyhan they wanted to understand how the company would be paid for future deliveries and how it would recoup $300 million for the oil it had delivered before the pipeline was shut.

Turkey has yet to receive any information from Iraq on the resumption of flows, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Reuters on Wednesday.

A restart could also cause issues in OPEC+, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia and other allies, where Iraq has been under pressure to comply with its pledge to reduce its output. Additional supply from the Kurdish region could put Iraq over its OPEC+ supply target.

An Iraqi official said it was possible for Iraq to restart the pipeline and remain compliant with OPEC+ supply policy.

Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at investment bank UBS, said the overall impact of the resumption could be muted.

“From an oil market perspective, Iraq is bound to the OPEC+ production deal, so I wouldn’t expect additional production from Iraq in case of a pipeline restart, but just a change in the way it is exported (currently, among others, using trucks),” he said.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2025/02/21/us-piles-pressure-on-iraq-to-resume-kurdish-oil-exports-sources-say

 

[Cpt. Rishwat]

For someone who is more clued in on geopolitics, why is Trump taking such an aggressive stance towards Iran as opposed to other Gulf countries in the region?

 

[RexRex]

For someone who is more clued in on geopolitics, why is Trump taking such an aggressive stance towards Iran as opposed to other Gulf countries in the region?

It's not just Trump, it's been US foreign policy since atleast the Bush presidency.

 

[Cpt. Rishwat]

It's not just Trump, it's been US foreign policy since atleast the Bush presidency.

Yes but Trump has taken a different direction on a lot of issues such as Russia, Europe, tariffs etc. I am just wondering what is so special about Iran that he doesn't feel he can do a deal there.

 

[sweep_shot]

I am just wondering what is so special about Iran that he doesn't feel he can do a deal there.

Deep state and Israel.

Israel practically controls USA.

 

[Cpt. Rishwat]

Deep state and Israel.

Israel practically controls USA.

I don't really believe that is true any more. I think Trump is more concerned about rebuilding American business, israel's concerns are not really in line with this.