BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament called on Sunday for US and other foreign troops to leave amid a growing backlash against the US killing of a top Iranian military commander that has heightened fears of a wider Middle East conflict.

Qassem Soleimani was killed on Friday in a US drone strike on his convoy at Baghdad airport, an attack that carried US-Iranian hostilities into uncharted waters and stoked concern about a major conflagration.

In a war of words between Iran and the United States, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday Washington would target any Iranian decision-makers it chose if there were further attacks on US interests by Iranian forces or their proxies.

On Friday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had said Soleimani’s death would intensify Tehran’s resistance to the United States and Israel.

Abuhamzeh, the Revolutionary Guards’ commander in Kerman province, mentioned a series of possible targets for reprisals including the Gulf waterway through which about a third of the world’s ship-borne oil is exported to global markets.

Trump threatens to hit 52 sites in Iran

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital point for the West and a large number of American destroyers and warships cross there,” he was quoted as saying on Friday evening by the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

“Vital American targets in the region have long since been identified by Iran... Some 35 US targets in the region as well as Tel Aviv are within our reach,” he added.

US President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday Iran “is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets”. He said the United States had “targeted 52 Iranian sites”, some “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD”.

As Washington and Tehran traded threats and counter-threats, the European Union, Britain and Oman urged them to make diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.

In its resolution on Sunday, the Iraqi parliament called for an end to all foreign troop presence in the country, reflecting the fears of many in Iraq that the strike could engulf them in another war between two bigger powers long at odds in Iraq and across the region.

“The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason,” it said.

While such resolutions are not binding on the government, this one is likely to be heeded: Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdihad earlier called on parliament to end foreign troop presence as soon as possible.

Pompeo told CBS’s Face the Nation show that Washington was watching very closely what took place in the Iraqi parliament. He did not say whether the United States would remove its troops from Iraq if requested by the Iraqi government.

Some 5,000 US troops remain in Iraq, most in an advisory role.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani told state television the Iraqi parliament’s vote meant the US military presence in Iraq was considered an occupation.

Despite decades of US-Iran enmity, Iranian-backed militia and US troops fought side by side during Iraq’s 2014-17 war against the militant Islamic State group, their common enemy.

‘Terrorist in a suit’

Earlier on Sunday, Iran lambasted Trump for threatening to hit 52 Iranian sites, including targets important to Iranian culture, if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets in retaliation for Soleimani’s death.

“Like IS, Like Hitler, Like Genghis! 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’,” Information and Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi wrote on Twitter.

In remarks to Fox News on Sunday, Pompeo said Trump had not threatened to target Iranian cultural sites.

Soleimani masterminded Iran’s clandestine and military operations abroad as head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, creating an arc of Shia power with the help of proxy militias confronting the regional might of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2020