Killing of general upends Mideast
Iran quits nuclear deal, Iraq votes to expel U.S. forces, coalition braces for retaliation
BEIRUT >> The consequences of the United States’ assassination of a top Iranian general rippled across the Middle East and beyond Sunday, with Iran ending commitments it made to limit its nuclear fuel production and Iraqi lawmakers voting to expel U.S. forces from their country.
Steeling for retaliation from Iran, a U.S.led coalition in Iraq and Syria suspended the campaign it has waged against the Islamic State terrorists for years, and hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the street to mourn the assassinated general, Qassem Soleimani.
Warning Iran not to attack, President Donald Trump said the United States had pinpointed 52 targets in Iran, including cultural sites. The sites, he said, represented the
52 American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
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 presence in West Asia has begun.”
Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so would constitute a war crime under international law.
“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people.
They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump said, speaking with reporters Sunday as he returned to Washington from his holiday stay in Florida.
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 nation’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 deal if the economic sanctions imposed on it are removed and Iran’s interests guaranteed, the government said. U.S. sanctions have hit Iran’s oil-based 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.
U.S. allies have largely kept quiet so as not to put themselves in the line of fire.
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 assassination 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.
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.
Also Sunday, Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t leave Iraq without being paid for its military investments over the years — then said if the troops do have to withdraw, he would levy punishing economic penalties on Baghdad.
“We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,” he said. “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.”
He added: “We’re not leaving until they pay us back for it.”
A pullout of the estimated 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq could cripple the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and allow 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 Iraq and Iran and reinforced solidarity among hard-liners and moderates in Iran against the United States. After the vote in Iraq calling on the government to expel U.S. troops, Iranian officials reacted with congratulatory messages.
Hesameddin Ashena, a top adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, wrote on Twitter, “Expanding friendship with our neighbors and domestic unity are the best gifts for protecting our national security.”
In Iraq, the attack was seen as a violation of the nation’s sovereignty. On Sunday, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry said it had summoned the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. In Iran, it was viewed as tantamount to an act of war. Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told CNN that Iran’s response would include an attack on “U.S. military targets.”
As the Middle East braced for Iranian retaliation, which analysts said was all but inevitable and U.S. officials said they expected within weeks, Iran and Washington ratcheted up the rhetoric.
Members of Iran’s Parliament chanted, “Death to America!” en masse in the chamber Sunday in protest over Soleimani’s killing, television footage showed.
The chants came as Trump fired off a series of Twitter ripostes to the growing anger, saying that the United States had already chosen 52 targets in Iran.
Iran summoned the Swiss envoy representing U.S. interests in Tehran on Sunday to protest Trump’s threat that Washington would target Iranian sites. And Trump’s tweet became a rallying cry among Iranians, many of whom shared it widely on social media with the message, “Attend the funeral for our cultural heritage.”
Iran’s information and telecommunications minister, Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, denounced Trump as “a terrorist in a suit.”
“Like ISIS, Like Hitler, Like Genghis!” Jahromi said on Twitter. “They all hate cultures. Trump is a terrorist in a suit. He will learn history very soon that NOBODY can defeat ‘the Great Iranian Nation & Culture.’”
The attack on the Iranian general left the United States’ European allies scrambling to address the safety of their troops in the Middle East and complaining that they had been given no warning about the strike. European leaders called for a de-escalation of the tensions between Iran and the United States.
Germany’s defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said in a statement: “Iraq cannot be allowed to sink into chaos, and certainly not under the control of extremists. Therefore, it is important not to let up now in the fight against Islamic State.”
In general, the Europeans did not specifically criticize Trump for his decision and generally share the U.S. view that Iran has been a destabilizing force in the Middle East and a supporter of terrorism. At the same time, no European government praised the killing of Soleimani, emphasizing instead the increased risks to their citizens, troops and interests.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was reported to be angry with Trump for not informing him or other allies with troops in Iraq about the decision to kill Soleimani. While carried out by Americans, the killing is seen as having put all European citizens and troops in Iraq and the wider region at heightened risk.
Johnson, who was said to be returning early from a vacation in the Caribbean, is expected to discuss the issues with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Trump in the next few days, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained that the response by European allies had not been “helpful.” He told Fox News in an interview, “Frankly, the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.
In particular, the Europeans have tried to persuade Iran to keep to the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal. Trump pulled the United States out of it in May 2018, reimposing harsh economic sanctions on Iran.
The Europeans also are working to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping. About one-third of the world’s oil tankers use the waterway, which Iran has intermittently threatened to close.