Pro-Iran protesters left the area around the US embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, on the orders of Hachd al-Chaabi paramilitaries, ending an episode of violence that culminated in an unprecedented attack on the chancellery.
If the violence has stopped in Baghdad, the escalation between Iran and the United States, enemy countries and both active powers in Iraq, continues: President Donald Trump has threatened to pay the "high price" to the Iran accused of "orchestrating" the attack on its embassy on Tuesday, and Tehran has summoned the representative of Switzerland responsible for American interests in Iran.
The tents dismantled
Believing that the demonstrators' "message" had been "heard", the powerful Hachd called on his supporters to relocate their sit-in outside the ultra-secure Green Zone in Baghdad, where the American embassy is located.
Immediately, noted an AFP photographer, the demonstrators dismantled all the tents assembled the day before for a sit-in then said unlimited, following their attack on the chancellery to denounce the American raids against bases of a pro-Iran faction which left 25 dead. Hundreds of demonstrators marched to the exits of the Green Zone where the embassy is located, marching with the cry of "We burned them".
Consular activities of the Embassy suspended
"We had a great success: we arrived at the American embassy when no one had done it before" and now, "the ball is in the court of the Parliament", told AFP Mohammed Mohieddine , spokesman for Hezbollah brigades, targeted Sunday evening by American planes.
Washington has announced that the embassy's consular activities have been suspended "until further notice", advising American nationals living in Iraq not to approach the building.
This Hashd show of force raised the specter of two traumas for their embassies in Washington, in Tehran in 1979 and in Benghazi in Libya in 2012. In Baghdad, pro-Iran officials aim to gather signatures in Parliament to denounce the Iraqi-American cooperation agreement authorizing the presence of 5,200 American soldiers on Iraqi soil.
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