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Trump wants to keep US forces in Iraq
US President Donald Trump has said he wants to keep US forces in Iraq to keep a close eye on Iran.
In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, President Trump said that while the invasion of Iraq: “Was one of the greatest mistakes … that our country has ever made,” he will seek to maintain a military presence there: “Because I want to be able to watch Iran”.
“We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It’s perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up,” he said in an apparent reference to Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq, which he visited during a trip to the country in December.
The New York Times reported that the US has been quietly negotiating with Iraq for weeks to allow US forces, now operating in Syria, to shift to bases in Iraq. Iraqi First Deputy Speaker Hassan Karim Kaabi said yesterday that lawmakers will work on drafting a law that would terminate the security agreement with the US, ending the presence of the US and other foreign military forces in the country.
Trump clarified that the 2,000 US troops in Syria would leave “in a matter of time,” and cited the need to “protect Israel and other things that we have” for slowing down his withdrawal timetable. He also denounced the failures by his own intelligence agencies, saying: “Those intel people didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and they got us tied up in a war that we should have never been in. And we’ve spent $7tn in the Middle East and we have lost lives.”
Trump also criticised his predecessor’s policy in Syria, saying President Barack Obama never wanted to “violate the red line in the sand,” which showed “tremendous weakness”. He added that he expects to announce soon that ISIS will have lost 100 per cent of territory it controlled.
Speaking on the US’s role in Afghanistan, President Trump said his country had spent “more money than anybody’s ever spent in history” there, saying its “got to stop at some point”. The US and Taliban officials have said progress was made in peace talks in recent weeks.