Rep. McCaul: Kurdistan is friendliest part of Iraq

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – “Kurdistan is the most friendly part of Iraq that we have,” Rep. Michael McCaul (Texas), the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday.

The US-led coalition against the so-called Islamic State needs the Patriot missile defense system to protect both US troops and the Iraqi people, McCaul also affirmed.

Washington is currently engaged in discussions with Baghdad on the issue, because “the host country of Iraq has to request that we put in the Patriot defense system,” McCaul said.

On Jan. 30, Secretary of Defense, Dr. Mark Esper, told journalists that the United States was conducting talks with the Iraqi government about moving Patriot missiles into the country to defend against any further missile strikes, such as Tehran’s Jan. 8 attack on Ain al-Assad airbase in Anbar province, in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian Quds Force leader Qasim Soleimani five days earlier.

No further military exchanges have followed, but pressure from pro-Iranian factions within Iraq to limit or expel US forces from the country has increased.

On Tuesday, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the US-led coalition against the Islamic State, visited Baghdad and met with the caretaker Prime Minister, Adil Abdul Mahdi, who resigned his post in late November, after two months of popular protests against government corruption and poor services.

The US has a Patriot anti-missile battery in Kuwait that it is planning to move into Iraq. Almost certainly, McKenzie raised that issue, when he met with Abdul Mahdi. However, the CENTCOM commander declined to comment on it to US reporters accompanying him on a broader tour of the Middle East that included his stop in Baghdad.

Indeed, the reporters could not get visas to enter Iraq and discussed McKenzie’s trip there with him afterward, aboard his military aircraft.

Too much turmoil in Baghdad for any decision?

Although Iraqi President Barham Salih has named a new prime minister – Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi – to replace Abdul Mahdi, Allawi has yet to be sworn into office.

“It is not clear that anyone in Baghdad is in a position now to make a decision about the Patriots,” Col. Norvell DeAtkine (US Army, Retired), former director of Middle East Studies at the US Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, told Kurdistan 24.

“There is not a total agreement within the Shia parties” on Allawi as the next prime minister, DeAtkine said, “and not from the Sunnis either. There is still a lot of horse trading going on.”

Additionally, many protestors have criticized Allawi’s nomination. Allawi was Minister of Communications in the government of Nouri al-Maliki, but the demonstrators have said they reject, in its entirety, the political elite that came into power, after the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany