The U.S. strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Suleimani, Iran's top general, may mark a death blow for American political influence in Iraq.
The crowd thronged around the two coffins, one draped in the Iraqi tricolor and the other wrapped in the red, white and green of the Iranian flag. Behind them, thousands trudged alongside a procession of trucks, chanting, “There is no god but God, and America is the enemy of God.”
Iran is Iraq’s next-door neighbor, with a 900-mile border between the two. And though it once fought an almost eight-year war against Hussein, Iran became one of Iraq’s top trading partners after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. A massive U.S. Army study of the Iraq war released last year declared that “an emboldened and expansionist Iran appears to be the only victor” of the nearly 17-year, nearly $1-trillion U.S. effort, which led to the loss of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives.
“If Iraq is forced to choose between the two sides, more logically it’s the Iranians that would be the choice: They’ll always be there; the Americans won’t,” Jiyad said. “The problem is no one wanted to make that choice.” The impression among the political class, said Ali Taher, an analyst at the Bayan Center, is that “the U.S. is not to be trusted.”At the heart of U.S.-Iraqi relations is the future status of the remaining 5,000 or so American soldiers and the unspecified number of contractors in the country.
The Trump administration does not publicly acknowledge the depth of anti-American sentiment, saying many Iraqis side with the United States but are pressured to voice support for Iran by its proxies. Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security advisor, said the White House would be “disappointed” if Iraq votes to boot the Americans after the U.S. has invested “enormous amounts of blood and treasure” in the country.
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