Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf visited Iraq on Wednesday and said that the US was seeking to exit the region, comments that come following a report from The Washington Post that said the Pentagon is considering pulling back from the Persian Gulf after many of its bases in the area were heavily damaged by Iranian strikes.
Iran’s MEHR news agency reported that Ghalibaf made the comments while visiting the site of the 2020 US airstrike that killed IRGC Quds Force Commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was a senior commander in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a coalition of mostly Shia militias formed in 2014 to fight ISIS.
“Dear Abu Mahdi and Haj Qassem! This is the fruit of your struggle and your blessed blood,” Ghalibaf wrote on X. “In the new regional order, foreign powers’ interference in the equations between states is receding at an accelerating pace; America is seeking an honorable exit for itself from the region, and the project from the river to the sea for the Zionist entity has become mere fragments of dreams.”
Ghalibaf also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who has set a September 30 deadline for the Iran-aligned Shia militias to disarm, which is supposed to coincide with an Israeli withdrawal. Some factions have agreed to the plan, but others, including Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful militias, have rejected the call to disarm. It’s unclear what Ghalibaf and al-Zaidi discussed.
Ghalibaf held a separate meeting with Iraqi President Nazar al-Amidi, where he stated that the US wants to “plunder” the region.
“The United States has approached the countries of the Persian Gulf and the region only to loot and plunder their resources,” Ghalibaf said, according to Iran’s PressTV. “Experience and the recent conflict have proven to regional countries that Americans are not only incapable of guaranteeing their security, but are actively the disruptors of regional peace.”
