Friday, 21 August 2020_Iraqi resistance groups threaten to target the American interests in the Arab country if Prime Minister Mustafa al-Khadhimi’s ongoing visit to Washington fails to produce an agreement on US forces’ withdrawal from the Iraqi soil.
The statement was released on Thursday -- concurrent with the premier’s meetings with American officials at the White House -- by the resistance groups that form part of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi or Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) anti-terror force, Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network reported.
The PMU, which includes such resistance groups as the Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, has been integrated into the Iraqi Defense Forces as a result of its successful and indispensable contribution to the country’s defeating the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in late 2017.
The groups considered expulsion of the troops to be Baghdad’s top priority, urging the PM to accord primacy to a law approved by the parliament that mandates the forces’ withdrawal.
The legislature passed the law in January shortly after a US drone strike assassinated Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the PMU’s second-in-command, in Baghdad alongside many others. The attack came while General Solemani was paying an official visit to the Iraqi capital.
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