Iran warned: U.S. ‘will respond’
NUCLEAR DEAL: Tehran announces it will end commitments to limits on uranium enrichment IRAQ: Lawmakers vote to expel American forces; coalition suspends operations against ISIS
BAGHDAD — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iran on Sunday that the United States could attack the country within its borders and its leaders if they take hostile actions against American interests as the consequences of the U.S. killing a top Iranian general rippled across the Middle East and beyond, with Iran all but abandoning a landmark nuclear agreement and Iraqi lawmakers voting to expel U.S. forces from their country.
“I’ve been part of the discussion and planning process — everything I’ve seen about how we will respond with great force and great vigor if the Iranian leadership makes a bad decision,” Pompeo said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We hope that they won’t, but when they do, America will respond.”
Steeling for retaliation from Iran, a U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria suspended the campaign it has waged against the Islamic State for years as hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the street to mourn the general, Qassem Soleimani.
“Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production, including enrichment capacity,” the Iranian government said in an announcement Sunday that seemed to signal the de facto collapse of the 2015 agreement.
Also warning Iran not to attack, President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States had picked 52 sites, “some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,” that “WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.” The sites, he said, represented the 52 American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Trump also threatened Iraq on Sunday with “very big sanctions” if the country expels U.S. forces.
Amid outrage in Iran, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif declared that “targeting cultural sites is a war crime” and predicted that the “end of U.S. malign pres
ence in West Asia has begun.”
On Sunday afternoon, Trump announced on Twitter that his Twitter posts themselves were notifications to Congress “that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.”
The comments by Trump and Pompeo, who had pushed for killing Soleimani, on potential American attacks on Iran are certain to increase tensions with Congress, where Democrats and some Republicans say the Trump administration has no authorization to enter into war with Iran.
Lawmakers have criticized Trump for not telling them in advance of the strike on Soleimani. Among those attacking Trump’s actions is a Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who wrote on Twitter that the main question “is whether the assassination of Soleimani will expand the war to endanger the lives of every American soldier or diplomat in the Middle East?”
Analysts of Iran and American policy said the killing of Soleimani and other actions by the Trump administration appeared to be taking place in the absence of any larger strategy.
“This strike has not changed the problem that the United States still has no clear strategy toward Iran,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation, a research group that often advises the American government. “What do we want to accomplish? If the goal of maximum pressure was to create better Iranian behavior or a better nuclear deal, it’s hard to see how this strike advances either objective.”
Trump has said that the killing of Soleimani on Friday was aimed at preventing war. But so far, it has unleashed a host of unanticipated consequences that could dramatically alter where the United States operates. Increasingly, the killing appeared to be generating effects far beyond the U.S.’ ability to control.
That may include Iran’s nuclear future.
On Sunday, the Iranian government said it was abandoning its “final limitations in the nuclear deal,” the international agreement intended to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons. The decision leaves no restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, the statement said, including on uranium enrichment, production, research and expansion.
Iran will, however, continue its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and return to the nuclear limits if the economic sanctions imposed on it are removed and Iran’s interests guaranteed, the government said. U.S. sanctions have hit Iran’s oilbased economy particularly hard.
Soleimani was a towering figure both in Iran and across the Middle East, where he cultivated proxy militias in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Since he was killed in a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport Friday alongside a powerful Iraqi militia leader, Iran and its partners have stepped up calls for vengeance, although they have yet to follow through on the threats.
Lawmakers in Iraq voted Sunday to require the government to end the presence of U.S. troops in the country after the United States ordered the killing on Iraqi soil.
The vote will not be final until it is signed by the prime minister, and it was unclear whether Iraq’s current caretaker government had the authority to end the relationship with the U.S. military.
Few doubted, however, that the country would take whatever legal actions were necessary to compel a U.S. departure over the coming months. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq drafted the language and submitted the bill approved by Parliament on Sunday, leaving little doubt about his support.
Trump warned Iraq on Sunday that there would be dire consequences for expelling U.S. forces.
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. Long before my time. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” he said. “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,” Trump added. “If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq.”
Although the vote in Parliament was 170-0, lawmakers were more divided on the issue of ousting U.S. troops than that tally may suggest.
Many of the 328 members of Parliament, primarily those representing the country’s ethnic Kurdish and Sunni Muslim minorities, did not attend the session and did not vote. Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority dominates the Iraqi government.
While groups that grew out of Shiite militia organizations have pushed hard for the expulsion, Sunni Muslim factions and the Kurds have wanted the United States to stay.
The legislation threads a fine needle: While using strong language demanding that the government “end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil and prevent the use of Iraqi airspace, soil and water for any reason” by foreign forces, it gives no timetable for doing so.
It would end the mission approved in 2014 that gave the United States the explicit task of helping Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State. That agreement gave the Americans substantial latitude to launch attacks and use Iraqi airspace.
But the measure would leave in place the Strategic Framework Agreement, which allows a U.S. troop presence in Iraq in some form, although only “at the invitation of the Iraqi government.”
On Sunday, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria said that it would pause its yearslong mission of fighting the Islamic State and training local forces in both countries.
A pullout of the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq could cripple the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, possibly facilitating its resurgence. A smaller contingent of about 1,000 U.S. troops are in eastern Syria.
The general’s killing unleashed calls for vengeance in both Iraq and Iran and reinforced solidarity among hard-liners and moderates in Iran against the U.S. After the vote in Iraq calling on the government to expel U.S. troops, Iranian officials reacted with congratulatory messages.