Pro-Iran groups in Iraq called on Friday for the withdrawal of US troops, with one powerful faction warning of “additional wars in the region” after a wave of Israeli strikes on Iran.
During the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza since October 2023, Tehran-aligned armed factions have launched rocket and drone attacks at army bases hosting US troops, who are deployed in Iraq and in neighbouring Syria as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.
Accusing US President Donald Trump of having “authorised” the major Israeli attack on Iran on Friday, Iraqi group Kataeb Hezbollah said in a statement that “the American forces in Iraq have enabled this aggression by opening the Iraqi airspace to Zionist aircraft.”
To stop Iraq from becoming “a battlefield,” Kataeb Hezbollah said that the government in Baghdad “must urgently remove these hostile foreign forces from the country in order to avoid additional wars in the region.”
Akram al-Kaabi, the leader of another group, Al-Nujaba, decried the alleged “coordination” between Israel and the “American occupier” and called for the “complete withdrawal” of US forces.
US forces stationed in Iraq at Baghdad’s invitation have supported the fight against the Islamic State group.
The foreign troops in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by pro-Iran militants following the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, but responded with heavy strikes on Tehran-linked targets, and the attacks largely subsided.
The United States and Iraq have announced that the anti-IS coalition would end its decade-long military mission in federal Iraq by the end of 2025, and by September 2026 in the autonomous Kurdistan region in the country’s north.
There are currently about 2,500 US troops in Iraq.
