 Hello and welcome to News Clicks International Roundup. Today, we will be looking at the developments in West Asia following the historic resolution by the Iraqi Parliament to ask U.S. troops to vacate the country. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so after the assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad last week, as well as the deputy head of the PMF, there was a strong sense that there would be some sort of retaliation. And while there hasn't been any military act so far except for certain attacks yesterday night at the U.S. Embassy, the most important development has been the Iraqi Parliament resolution asking for multiple actions, including the U.S. to withdraw. So how do you see the implications of this move? Well, it's, you know, one thing is about the resolution itself. It has two parts to it. One is asking all foreign troops to go. It has a process before it can actually become reality on the ground. That is, of course, if the United States is willing to leave. But leaving that out, the question is these troops, all the foreign troops which are there and there are also other NATO countries who have their troops over there, they're all there to assist the Iraqi government to fight the ISIS. And that is according to the Security Council resolution, which sets that ISIS and Al Qaeda are the forces which are, which have to be fought and all countries should support this fight. So that is under the Security Council resolution nationally and locally because at one point if you remember the Iraqi government had asked the United States to leave because they said the Iraqi, the U.S. said that we will not let our troops come under any Iraqi law. So they are supposed to only assist the Iraqi forces under this agreement. So the question that comes up is, of course, how this will rectify. The government has to actually agree with this. Well, it's the prime minister who moved that resolution. So presumably that's only a matter of shall we say just formality. But there is also a longer issue that even if the U.S. is asked to go, will it go? The second issue that comes up is that once we know on the terms under which the U.S. was there, it is to assist the Iraqi government forces against ISIS. Now they have taken that mandate to the level by which they can say they have extra territorial rights over Iraq because they can assassinate a general of the Iraqi government, which is what El Mahandis was, and of course Soleimani, who was a ranking general in the Iran armed forces, Tal Quds Brigade. Now given all of that, the question that comes up in any case, the second part of the resolution says the Iraq will complain to the United Nations Security Council against the acts of the United States, which far exceed the mandate which the Security Council has given them, and of course the terms under which they have been invited by Iraq, which is to assist the Iraqi government forces. Assassination of guests and commanders of the Iraqi armed forces, which is what we officially now is, cannot be accepted as something which is within the terms of the agreement under which the U.S. forces are there, or the international mandate with which they have sought to be there. So under both of these, this action of assassinating two senior commanders, one of the Iraqi armed forces and the PMF, and one of the El Quds Brigade, which is a part again of the Iran Revolutionary Guards, and also a part of the Iraq armed forces. I think all of this really raises the fundamental question, does the United States see themselves as an occupying power, and Iraq as a colony, or where they're under the invitation of the Iraqi forces, Iraqi government, and were there to assist as the Security Council mandate was. I think these are issues which come out, but as we know, and we've discussed a number of times, the United States does not recognize international law, it only recognizes domestic law, while it wants every other country in the world to toe, to not only international law, but interpretation of the international law, and that's the possibility that we are going to see. Right. And this attack on the sovereignty of Iraq is especially glaring, because Prime Minister Adil Abul Mehdi has said that Qasem Soleimani was in Iraq as part of, say, back channel negotiations that were going on with Saudi Arabia regarding de-escalating tensions in the region. And obviously, the U.S. would have had some role to play. So he was basically almost used as a dummy in this case. Well, it's a very important issue. Iraq has said two things, apart from asking the foreign forces to leave. One of it is that they're going to complain to the United Nations Security Council regarding what this is, which is the assassination of two senior military figures, both of one of Iraq and one of Iran. But the second part is actually even more dangerous, because what the Prime Minister has said in the parliament, which puts a light to the entire campaign the United States has launched, that Soleimani was the terrorist in chief, except that we didn't know about it, that he, in fact, had even was a part of the 9-11, because he said he was the one helping them to escape to Afghanistan, which we all know that they had kept them under house arrest and so on. Let's not even get into that. And then, coming to India also, they have said that he was actually planning strikes against India. Now, all of these has now come out to be something which is very far from the facts, because here is a Prime Minister of Iraq who says he was there at our invitation, basically to, as you said, de-escalate between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And we know that after the attack on Aramco, Saudi Arabia has given signals and they would like to de-escalate their relationship with Iran and also reach some sort of an agreement with Yemeni, what they call the rebels, but this is one of the civil war. This is one of the sides which obviously is an important player and who has taken responsibility for the Aramco case. So, there is a larger issue of how Saudi Arabia and Iran can reach some agreement, both as far as with regards to Syria, with regard to the Kurdish areas, with regard to Yemen. All of these is the larger, shall we say, the canvas of West Asia. And obviously, the two leading players there, Saudi Arabia and Iran, need to talk now if they want to de-escalate and they don't want to go in a collision course. Now, who had actually given them the feelers that the Iraq should play a role in negotiating this? Was it the United States administration who also wanted to de-escalate? Who's been giving signals? Trump has been giving signals for quite some time? Or was it just the Saudi Arabians and the Iranians using Iraq as basically an honest broker between the two of them? This is at the moment unclear. If it was Saudi Arabia and Iran using Iraq as a back channel and Soleimani was there at the official invitation or the unofficial invitation but nevertheless a diplomatic move by the Iraqi government, then this makes this assassination of Soleimani particularly egregious because this is not something which was then intended to snuff out, as I say, a major terrorist. But it was essentially meant to sabotage then the iradi Saudi Arabian reapproach, which they seem to have been using Iraq for. And Soleimani was therefore in this particular case coming for peace negotiations and therefore not for the purpose with which the United States is trying to paint him. So by this act, the Prime Minister saying what he has, he has given the lie to the entire campaign that the United States administration has launched against Soleimani. And it's also interesting in this entire campaign against Soleimani, what is missing entirely is the fact that also assassinated Mohandas and a senior commander, as we know of the PMF as you said, and also the head of the Kataib Hizbullah. So I think all of this makes it very difficult to sustain the fiction that the United States is actually playing for peace. It comes out clearly that they are now an occupying power if they refuse to go. I believe they're already on record saying no, no, no. They're threatened sanctions. Trump has threatened unprecedented sanctions if they're asked to withdraw. Yeah, so basically, it's a head I win till you lose kind of situation with the United States. But as we know, United States is never played by the rule book, the international rule book. It's only that Trump's shall we say, real estate tycoon model makes that much more clear. And therefore, it becomes difficult for people who want the sophisticated defense of all of this to basically to be able to defend the United States. That's real reality on the ground. But nevertheless, I think the picture is clear. 17 years after the so called war on terror, which turned into a war against Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the 9 11 strikes. It's very clear that US is coming out more openly as an occupying power. And Iraq is their battleground, not against ISIS, but essentially to control the entire area. And I think this assassination plus what we see now makes this much more clear. And before we go to the question of how Iran is likely to respond, they've already announced some measures regarding the JCPOA. But the funeral procession for General Soleimani saw huge crowds, both in Iraq and in Iran. And this is also cut across, say, religious and sectarian divides the kind of people that are mobilized. So what exactly was the role of Soleimani and Mohan this actually in say, in Iraq specifically, we know what the role in Iran was. But in Iraq, how were they so important? You see, it's very clear if you see the map, which is there. And you see that Al Qaeda, ISIS kind of forces had virtually taken over northern Iraq. And they were also very close to Baghdad. And this is really the Tigris Euphrates Valley. So if you see all of that, you will realize the fight back that took place did not take place through the Iraqi armed forces, which were in the state of collapse, which had given up Mosul virtually without a fight. And even the Kurds later had collapsed in Kirkuk. They had given up the famous Peshmerga. Peshmerga just ran away from there. So they had taken over that whole region and it's comes from Syria into Iraq. There's a huge expanse that had been taken over. And the fight back in Syria took place, of course, led by the Syrian government. But in the case of Iraq, it was really the militias which become the PMF, which led the fight. It was not the Iraqi armed forces at that point, which was in the state of collapse. And it is those forces backed by Soleimani, you see the Iraqi al-Quds force, the Iranian al-Quds force is not a fighting force. It's really more an advisory role, advisors, military advisors, if you will, trying to tell them how to do strategy, training, all of this. So they were not the ones doing the fighting. The fighting was really being done by the Iraqi militias and the Shia militias in this particular case, and which later gets integrated the Iraqi army as the PMF. The Soleimani was a key figure in helping them to provide that, shall we say, strategic understanding of how to fight, converting them from irregulars into regular armed forces. And that's the role for which the Iraqi people will remember that it was his leadership and people like Mohandis who led this battle and were able to beat back the ISIS al-Qaeda offensive. And that is how Mosul was liberated. And later, of course, Barzali's overcalculation led also its fall to the hands of the Iraqi government. So the stiffening of the Iraqi armed forces, which allowed this beat back to take place, had at the core of it a Soleimani and Mohandis and people like that. And the US completely underestimates that people might be unhappy with the government. They may also feel that some sections of this government is too close to Iran. They may also, therefore, share some of the anger against Iran, because let's face it, unlike Iran, Iraq had had a secular government for a very long time. Iran, the secular government was unfortunately Shah of Iran's government, which was also a completely proxy for the US. Proxy for the US and also look at it. Shahs and kings in today's world as anachronism. So Shah was really the quote unquote secular face is not very popular. But in Bathis in Syria had a deep social role and they were really secular. And in spite of Saddam's shall we say brutalities, the Syria was still Iraq was still a very secular republic. So all of that being beaten back is not something that Syrian people continuously Syria. All that being beaten back is not something the Iraqi people ever wanted. So they rallied to the Iraqi government and they were therefore sensitive to the issue that they needed the help of the Shia forces as well, the Shia militias and integrate them into a more secular fabric. This is really the battle in Iraq. The battle is not with Mishias and Sunnis, but how to get a secular republic is stitched back together, which the Americans splintered completely backing the Shias against Sunnis first. Later on, it seems at the moment they want to back the Sunnis against Shias. So this kind of divisive politics is what needs to be prevented. And I think the role of Mahandas and Sulemani were very, very important in that. And that's why you have this huge outpouring of grief and sympathy for that we saw in the Sulemani funeral or is the dead body is being taken from Iraq to Iran. And you can see it is taking place in areas in Iraq, which have also seen protests against the Iraqi government. So I think we are we are the United States, the Western media and particularly the Western political establishments and do not understand West Asia. They have gone into the unfortunate mode of believing their own propaganda and therefore, more and more cut out from the reality that is on the ground. Thank you. 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