Rep. Steve King: US should have supported independence referendum

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – “I believe the Kurdish people, or the Iraqi Kurds, deserve their freedom,” Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) told Kurdistan 24 earlier this week.

“I’m a little disappointed in the position” of the administration on the Kurdish independence referendum, King stated.

“They’ve succeeded in establishing an autonomous Kurdish Region,” he said. “They’ve done a terrific job of governing it.”

“I would have liked to have seen our Secretary of State not declare” that the vote on the referendum—“which was 92 percent in favor of Kurdish independence from Iraq—to be an illegitimate election, but support it because it was the voice of the Kurdish people.”

If 92 percent of the people of the Kurdistan Region say they want independence, “the United States should have said, we endorse this result and encourage it to be formalized,” the Congressman continued.

King suggested a tantalizing alternative vision of what might have been.

“I think it actually would be an independent nation-state today,” he said, “had our Secretary of State made the announcement that I’ve suggested, rather than the one that he did.”

The Congressman criticized Iraq’s tough position toward the Kurds: “Baghdad wants to hold everything they can,” he said.

“Baghdad, though, is now almost a totally owned subsidiary of the Iranian mullahs,” he stated. “And I want that severed.”

King’s view on the question of Iranian influence in Iraq is, thus, quite different from that of the State Department, which believes that a united Iraq under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi can contain Iran’s role there.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany