Last week’s US attack in Iraq that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani has made Iraq a much more dangerous place. Concern over retaliation has many of the anti-ISIS coalition partners of the US deciding on withdrawals from Iraq for safety reasons.
Canada emphasized that this is potentially just “a temporary measure,” though with operations on pause, and the Iraqi parliament voting to expel all foreign troops from the country, there is a good chance they’re never coming back.
It was clear that the US attack was going to provoke Iranian retaliation, and Iran did retaliate on Tuesday night. The other nations had tried to distance themselves from the US action, and now physically are mostly going to Kuwait to be out of the line of fire.
The anti-ISIS coalition nations weren’t doing much in Iraq at this point anyhow. Beyond some very low-level training operations, ISIS has little presence in Iraq, and so the troops are mostly just there to show solidarity to US operations. With the US making them potential targets, they’re less eager to do that.
And now comes the arrangement.
The coalition of the willing – as Ron rightly said – is now the coalition of the unwilling. They’re packing their bags and getting out of Dodge (Iraq) over security concerns.
Since Iraq’s Parliament voted 170 to 0 to expel all US troops stationed in the country, PM Mahdi has no option but to accept the Parliament’s vote and tell the US to take their allies’ lead and leave. The US main base was already attacked by Iran’s missiles (no US casualties) as a warning, the White House and the Pentagon have no other option than to withdraw from Iraq, Eventually, they’ll have no option but to leave the Middle East altogether, since they don’t belong there in the first place.