Abadi decries Iran’s growing anti-terror role
baghdad — As fighting in Iraq raged last summer, Iranian MajorGeneral Qassem Soleimani came across unexpected opposition to his plans to defeat Daesh.
Soleimani is the commander of Iran’s Al Quds brigade and has been a key figure in the fight against the miliotant group in Iraq. That fight has been led not by Iraq’s army but by Iranian-backed militias.
But in August, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi told Soleimani that a planned assault on the city of Ramadi should be left to the Iraqi army, according to a government official and two diplomats.
Abadi, 64, wanted the militias to stay away to avoid inflaming ethnic tensions, the sources said.
Abadi’s office declined to comment on the story, which has been repeated in Baghdad’s diplomatic circles for months. Three Iraqi politicians denied it ever happened.
But the government official and the diplomats said the incident was one of a series of moves by Abadi to assert his authority as leader and to distance himself from Tehran and the militias that came to Baghdad’s rescue in 2014 and early 2015.
Abadi has begun to push for reconciliation between Iraq’s Shia and Sunnis, and for better relations with Arab neighbours like Saudi Arabia, they said.
Abadi also objected to Soleimani’s plane landing at Baghdad airport without prior permission. Abadi was also irritated that Soleimani used an official VIP hall at the airport when entering Iraq, even though he was not officially invited by the government. The deteriora- tion in their relationship, the sources said, began in August when Soleimani attended a top Iraqi security meeting run by Abadi and behaved in, what one source said, was “a bossy manner as if Iraq was an Iranian protectorate”. This, the sources said, had led Abadi to ask Soleimani why he was at the meeting. The Iranian general had then left. “Abadi questioned his presence. It was a matter of Iraqi sovereignty and nationalism,” one Western diplomat said. Abadi’s office declined to comment.
The Iraqi government official said Abadi and Soleimani had not fought but were “keeping an operational, business-like relationship. We can’t say it’s warm”. —