Winning the Peace in IraqSeptember/October 2019 169
the U.S. coalition to coordinate the counter- campaign. Washing-
ton has cooperated with Ameri, who is the leader o the pro-Iranian
Badr Organization, for years.
The administration’s statements and actions have aronted Iraqis
by appearing to ignore their sovereignty, which is still a sore subject
for a country the United States invaded. In February, Trump asserted
in a Face the Nation interview that he planned on keeping U.S. troops
in Iraq to “watch” Iran. This touched a nerve—the Iraqi government
welcomes the presence o U.S. troops for the express purposes o de-
feating and helping improve its armed forces, but its policy is to
maintain good relations with both Washington and Tehran. Trump’s
statement drew rebukes from Iraq’s prime minister, its president, and
Sistani. Then, on May 7, U.S. Secretary o State Mike Pompeo made
a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he met with Iraqi leaders and pub-
licly demanded assurances that they would protect Americans against
any hostile activity, implicitly from Iran. A few days later, the State
Department ordered all nonessential personnel to leave the U.S. em-
bassy in Baghdad after a mortar fell nearby. Since then, two locations
where U.S. personnel are stationed have been targeted by rockets,
likely ¿red by Iranian-backed militias.
The mortar and rocket attacks were reminders o the bad old days o
the U.S. occupation, when rockets landed near the embassy with some
regularity, as well as troubling signs that U.S. troops could be targeted
as Washington increases its pressure on Tehran. Yet the United States
should be working with the Iraqi government, which desperately wants
to avoid a confrontation with Iran, rather than treating it with disdain.
The Trump administration’s moves were widely seen as overreactions
by U.S. and coalition ocials in Iraq, who for the past four years have
been quietly working to mitigate the threat posed by Iranian-backed
militias and who are con¿dent in their ability to protect U.S. troops.
For most Iraqis—and for many coalition ocials, too—Pompeo’s de-
mand came across less as a genuine response to a security threat and
more as an unnecessary attempt to humiliate Baghdad.
Washington is putting the Iraqi government in a dicult position.
It will appear weak to Iraqis i it does not resist American browbeat-
ing. And the more confrontational Washington’s stance becomes, the
more that pro-U.S. Iraqi politicians will be discredited in the eyes o
their fellow citizens. The Trump administration’s approach thus risks
driving Iraq into the arms o Iran—the opposite o its stated goal.