Pompeo sees Iran attack on troops
Print Edition
IRAN condemned Donald Trump yesterday as a “terrorist in a suit” after the US president threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets in retaliation for the killing of military commander Qassem Soleimani.
As the two countries assailed each other in a war of words, China, the European Union, Britain and Oman urged the parties to de-escalate the crisis.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said yesterday Iran will probably try to attack American troops. “We think there is a real likelihood Iran will make a mistake and make a decision to go after some of our forces, military forces in Iraq or soldiers in northeast Syria,” he told Fox News. “It would be a big mistake for Iran to go after them,” Pompeo said.
The US has about 60,000 troops in the region, including around 5,200 in Iraq. Washington ordered thousands more soldiers to the region on Friday after Soleimani’s killing.
“We’re preparing for all kinds of various responses,” including cyber attacks, Pompeo said. He added any US military action against Iran will be in line with international law.
Soleimani was killed on Friday by a US drone strike on his convoy in Baghdad, an attack that took long-running hostilities between Washington and Tehran into uncharted territory and raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East.
“Like ISIS, Like Hitler ... 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 tweeted.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised on Friday that Iran would seek harsh revenge for his death. Trump responded to that and other strong words from Tehran with a series of tweets on Saturday, saying Iran “is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets.”
The United States has “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,” he said.
It was Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposition of sanctions on Iran that touched off a new spiral of tensions after a brief thaw following the accord.
Iraq’s parliament yesterday approved a resolution to oust all foreign troops in the country following the US strike.
“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,” the resolution read.
“There is no need for the presence of American forces after defeating Daesh (Islamic State). We have our own armed forces which are capable of protecting the country,” said Ammar al-Shibli, a member of parliament’s legal committee.
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