Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani indicated in January that he was committed to speeding up negotiations with the US-led international coalition on the final withdrawal of its forces from the country. He confirmed Baghdad’s “steadfast and principled” position that the coalition had already fulfilled its mission.
Don’t expect the US to suddenly leave Iraq “while corporate interests steer American foreign policy,” Isa Blumi, an associate professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Stockholm University, told Sputnik.
“I don’t see this happening […] unless there is a serious revolution in Iraq itself or in the larger region that sees the US leave permanently from these strategic and very lucrative arenas for American corporations to make money,” Blumi said, commenting on the ambiguous announcement of a partial drawdown of US forces in Iraq.
The US footprint “remains omnipresent, hegemonic, willing to use enormous violence,” he noted.
The military presence “will be modified” due to the “vulnerability of explicit American presence” to aerial attacks, which might chip away at the dimming aura of US invincibility, the expert underscored.
Since the beginning of the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the bases of the US-led international coalition in Iraq, as well as US troops in Syria, have come under regular attacks, with armed Shiite groups claiming responsibility in Iraq.
Hellbound and Down 