A group of Iraqi militias has issued a warning that they were prepared to take up arms against the U.S. military presence in Iraq if U.S. troops stayed in the country past the upcoming year’s end deadline for combat operations revealed over the summer by President Joe Biden.
In a statement issued Friday and shared with Newsweek, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Commission, an umbrella of paramilitary groups aligned with the pro-Iran Axis of Resistance opposed to the U.S. footprint in the region, said its members were “closely monitoring the extent of commitment to the outcomes of the so-called strategic dialogue round” that took place between Washington and Baghdad in July.
The message went on to say that the council “did not believe in the seriousness of the occupation and its commitment” to withdrawing combat troops from Iraq according to the established timeline, but was itself “committed to giving the Iraqi negotiator an opportunity to expel the American occupation from our pure land through diplomatic means.”