The tone rises every day between the United States and Iran. The death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Friday in an American strike in Iraq raised fears of a conflagration in the Middle East. President Donald Trump threatens further reprisals.
Since the Air Force One presidential plane which brought him back to Washington after two weeks of vacation in Florida, the tenant of the White House did nothing, Sunday, January 5, to allay the concerns.
Asked about the attitude of Tehran, who shouts "revenge" and promises a "military" response, he opted for a very harsh tone: "If they do anything, there will be major reprisals". The tempestuous president also maintained his threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites. "They have the right to kill our nationals (...) and we do not have the right to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work like that," he said.
Rocket fire
Sunday evening, like the day before, rockets fell near the American embassy in the Green Zone of Baghdad, without causing any victims, according to witnesses. For more than two months, dozens of rockets have hit areas where US diplomats and soldiers are located in Iraq, killing an American contractor in late December.
The assassinations of General Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, number two of Hachd al-Chaabi, an Iraqi coalition of pro-Iran paramilitaries integrated into the security forces, have created a rare consensus against the United States in Iraq, shaken for months by a revolt in particular against the seizure of Iran.
In parliament, in the absence of the Kurdish deputies and most of the Sunni deputies, many elected officials chanted "No to America!". The head of the Parliament Mohammed al-Halboussi then read a decision which "compels the government to preserve the sovereignty of the country by withdrawing its request for aid" to the UN Security Council to fight the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) , and therefore to withdraw its invitation to the international coalition. The latter has already said that it had "suspended" the fight against IS because it is now "totally" dedicated to the protection of its troops.
>> To read: "Death of General Soleimani: why did Donald Trump choose to strike now?"
"We will not leave if they do not reimburse us!"
Some 5,200 American soldiers are currently stationed in Iraq. If the vote was welcomed by Iran, Donald Trump reacted very strongly, raising the possibility of imposing "very strong" sanctions against Baghdad.
"If they do ask us to leave, if we don't do it on a very friendly basis, we will impose sanctions on them like they have never seen before," he said. "We have an extraordinarily expensive air base there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We will not leave if they don't pay us back," he said.
The Hezbollah Brigades, the most radical faction of Hashd, had called on Iraqi soldiers on Saturday to move "at least 1,000 meters" from the sites where American soldiers are present from Sunday evening, implying that these sites could be the target of attacks. The Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, whose men are engaged in Syria with the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian ally, for his part affirmed that the American army "would pay the price of the assassination" of Soleimani.
Faced with mounting tensions, Washington recently announced the deployment of an additional 3,000 to 3,500 troops in the region.
Denouncing "violations of the sovereignty of Iraq", Baghdad announced Sunday that it had summoned the American ambassador and lodged a complaint with the Security Council of the UNO. The deaths of Soleimani and Mouhandis aroused immense emotion in Iraq and Iran.
On Sunday, a human tide of crying men and women shouting "Death to America" swept through several cities in Iran, including the Shia holy city of Machhad where the coffin of Soleimani arrived.
With AFP
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