US President Donald Trump threatened Iraq with massive sanctions on Sunday after the Iraqi parliament recommended the expulsion of US forces from the country, unless, he added, the US was compensated for an “extraordinarily expensive” air-base built there and operated by American military.
The American president also defended his earlier threat to attack Iranian cultural assets as reprisal for strikes from Iran carried out in retaliation against the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, in a US drone strike outside the Baghdad international airport. Trump has come under severe criticism at home on that score.
“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there,” the president told reporters on his way back to Washington from holidays spent at his private resort in Miami, Florida. “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.”
If the Iraqis insisted and did not “do it in a very friendly basis”, the president said the sanctions on Iraq will be like ‘they’ve never seen before’. “We will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame,” Trump said.
The Trump administration snapped back sanctions on Iran early 2018 after unilaterally pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly called the Iran deal, that was in force before the agreement in 2015 and ratcheted it up several notches in a strategy to apply “maximum pressure” to force Tehran to give up its nuclear programme altogether and not just cap if for a period mandated by the pact, and also abandon its ballistic missiles programme and cease “nefarious” activities int he region. The US has put out a 12-condition demand for resuming talks with Iran.
Responding to questions about his tweet targeting Iranian cultural assets, the president said, “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site?. It doesn’t work that way.”
Chances of the two sides resuming dialogue grew ever more remote over the weekend as an angry Iran suspended its commitments under the JCPOA. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will end its final limitations in the nuclear deal, meaning the limitation in the number of centrifuge,” it said in a statement. “Therefore Iran’s nuclear program will have no limitations in production including enrichment capacity and percentage and number of enriched uranium and research and expansion.”
