Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani said on Friday that the government will put together a bilateral committee to prepare for the end of a US-led coalition’s mission in the country.
The announcement comes a day after a US drone strike killed the leader of an Iran-backed armed group in Baghdad.
The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that it carried out the strike which killed Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, a leader of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which forms part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) umbrella group of paramilitaries.
“We are setting the date for the start of the bilateral committee to put arrangements to end the presence of the international coalition forces in Iraq permanently,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said, according to a statement from his office published on the social media platform X.
The US has 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria to assist with efforts to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State (IS) group, which took over large swathes of both countries in 2014, before being defeated by international forces.
The rare drone strike, which was conducted at noon local time Thursday, killed Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al-Jawari, who was also known as Abu Taqwa, the leader of U.S. designated Harakat-al-Nujaba, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed to reporters during a press conference.
“This individual was actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel, and as we’ve long said, we maintain the inherent right of self-defense and we’ll take necessary action to protect our personnel,” he said, adding that a second militant was also killed in the strike.
Harakat-al-Nujaba is an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that was founded in 2013 and had close ties to Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the United States four years ago Wednesday.
The United States is in Iraq at the invitation of Baghdad to support the coalition mission to defeat the Islamic State, but the airstrikes in Iraq are straining relations between the two allies, with the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani issuing condemnations following the American responses.
His office issued a statement Thursday describing the drone strike as “no different from terrorist activities” and a “blatant aggression and violation of Iraqi’s sovereignty and security.”
Asked about the effects of the retaliatory strikes in Iraq on the U.S.-Iraq relationship, Ryder repeatedly said that they are in the Middle Eastern country at the invitation of Iraq and that they maintain the right to self- defense.
“It is important to note that the strike was taken in self-defense, that no civilians were harmed and that no infrastructure or facilities were struck,” he said.
The strike comes amid growing regional escalation due to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is on his way to the Middle East to try to prevent a widening conflict. With agency reports
Jawad Karim al-Jawari