THERAN -- The commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says terrorist U.S. forces in Iraq will have to leave the Arab country with more humiliation than what they faced in Afghanistan.
“By the grace of God, all Americans will be expelled ... from this region,” Brigadier General Esmail Qa’ani said in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad on Thursday.
“A notable number of Americans has been forced out of this region and this will continue. As for Iraq, they must leave Iraq; otherwise, the resistance front inside Iraq will make the Americans miserable and they will have to leave Iraq under more humiliating conditions than they experienced in Afghanistan.”
Resistance forces, he said, are currently equipped with missiles and other weapons capable of targeting U.S. warships and carriers anywhere in the region.
He pointed to the 11-day Gaza war in May last year, saying Palestinian resistance groups in the coastal enclave fired 3,000 missiles at the occupying regime of Israel, 100 of which hit Tel Aviv.
“The Americans built an army for Afghanistan for 20 years but the army could not resist for 20 days, and on the other side of the region, the Zionist regime is building a six-meter wall around its occupied territory, but in last summer’s battle, the resistance fired 3,000 rockets from the besieged Gaza Strip at Israel and nearly 100 rockets landed in the regime’s capital,” he added.
On Thursday, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Algeria was quoted as saying that American forces are not leaving the Middle East in the near future despite Washington’s announcement of an end to its “combat mission” in Iraq.
Last month, the U.S. announced an end
to its combat mission in Iraq, but many Iraqi leaders have warned that nothing has changed in the number of American troops and the relabeling is a cloak to deceive the Iraqi people who are fiercely opposed to the presence of American forces.
In an article published by the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Robert Ford said it was “ridiculous” to believe the U.S. was leaving the Middle East, adding “the American forces are not leaving Syria and Iraq in the near future”.
“First, the Americans are keeping their bases in the Persian Gulf region in countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They are expanding the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. At the same time, the American navy continues to operate in the Persian Gulf and near the Arabian Peninsula,” Ford explained.
Second, he continued, neither of the former and current U.S. presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, withdrew all the American forces out of Syria or Iraq.
“In fact, the number of soldiers hasn’t changed for about two years and will not change much during the next few years. The Americans have promised not to undertake unilateral combat missions in Iraq and that is new,” he added.
Last month, Baghdad announced the end of the U.S. “combat mission” in Iraq, but about 2,500 American soldiers and 1,000 coalition troops will remain deployed in Iraq on the pretext of offering training, advice, and assistance to Iraqi forces.
Iraqi resistance groups have maintained that the U.S. is merely relabeling its military forces to Iraq. They have ramped up their calls for the expulsion of all American forces from the Arab country regardless of their labels.
The pressure to expel American forces began to build up after the U.S. assassinated top counter-terrorism commanders, Gen. Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, in Baghdad in January 2020.
In recent days, concurrent with the second anniversary of the “terrorist attack”, U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have been under repeated attacks.
The former American envoy maintained that developments in Asia, in Europe, and with Iran will affect the future American military position in the Middle East.
“Will China and Russia have more influence in the region? Of course,” he said, adding, “Regardless of its many political problems, America is no longer the single superpower. But any foreign leader who expects the American political class will abandon the Middle East doesn’t understand American domestic politics or Biden’s policy that seeks to share responsibility for stability in the region with America’s partners.”
Ford said while the last three American presidents have looked at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are cautious about starting a new land war in western Asia, being cautious about launching a new war is not the same as withdrawing.
Last year, the U.S. military withdrew its forces from Afghanistan 20 years after invading the country to topple the Taliban, in a war that killed, according to one estimate, between 897,000 and 929,000 people, and also cost the U.S. tax-payers $2.3 trillion.