No Friendship with America, Iraqi Resistance Group Reiterates
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The American occupation forces cannot stay in Iraq under any pretext, the head of the Harakat Hezbollah Nujaba resistance group said.
“The path of crusade continues and the fronts are active as the enemy is still present. As long as the US and Israeli Zionism are fighting against God, religion and humanity, the believers in sanctities and authentic values should stand up to them,” Akram al-Kaabi, the founder and secretary-general of the movement, said in a meeting on Sunday with the resistance group’s injured veteran soldiers in the fight against US occupation forces and Takfiri terrorists.
“There is no friendship with America,” he said. “The US is an enemy and will remain an enemy. We do not accept the staying of American forces, including advisers, technicians and combat forces. The resistance has no other position and will never change it.”
While the US claims it has ended its combat mission in Iraq, some 2,500 US troops still remain inside the Arab country in what Washington calls an “advisory” mission.
Pressured by the Iraqi people, US President Joe Biden and Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi declared in July 2021 that the US mission in Iraq would transition from combat to an “advisory” role by the end of that year.
Anti-American sentiments have soared in Iraq over US military adventurism in the region, in particular since Washington’s assassination of the top anti-terror commanders of Iraq and Iran in the Arab country three years ago.
Lt. General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), were martyred along with their comrades in a US drone strike that was authorized by then-president Donald Trump near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.
The two iconic anti-terror commanders are greatly admired for their instrumental role in fighting and decimating the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the region, particularly in Iraq and Syria.
Two days after the dastardly attack shook the region, Iraqi lawmakers unanimously approved a bill that required the government to end the presence of all US-led foreign military forces in the Arab country.
