Biden to host Iraqi leader as Mideast tensions soar, raising more questions about US troop presence
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will host the Iraqi leader this week for talks that come as tensions have risen in the Middle East over the war in Gaza and Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel over the weekend in retaliation for an Israeli military attack on an Iranian facility in Syria.
The sharp rise in security fears has raised further questions about the viability of the two-decade US military presence in Iraq, through which parts of Iran’s Saturday drone and missile attack on Israel flew through or were launched from. A U.S. Patriot battery in Irbil, Iraq, downed at least one Iranian ballistic missile, according to U.S. officials.
In addition, Iranian allies have initiated attacks from Iraq on US interests across the region, making Monday’s meeting between Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani all the more important. The talks will include a discussion on regional stability and future U.S. troop deployments, but will also focus on economic, trade and energy issues that U.S. officials say have become a key priority for the Iraqi government.
Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are both expected to discuss the presence of U.S. troops during meetings with al-Sudani. “It’s not the main focus of the visit… but it will almost certainly come up,” a senior US official said last week.
The US and Iraq began formal talks in January on ending the coalition created to help the Iraqi government fight Islamic State, while some 2,000 US troops remained in the country under an agreement with Baghdad. Iraqi officials have periodically called for those troops to be withdrawn.
The two countries have a delicate relationship, partly due to Iran’s significant influence in Iraq, where a coalition of Iranian-backed groups brought al-Sudani to power in October 2022.
The US has in recent months urged Iraq to do more to prevent attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria, which have further roiled the Middle East in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Iranian attacks on Israel over Iraqi airspace over the weekend further underscored US concerns, although al-Sudani had already left Baghdad and was heading to Washington when the drones and missiles were launched.
The US has also tried to put financial pressure on Baghdad’s relationship with Tehran, restricting Iraq’s access to its own dollars in an effort to stamp out money laundering, which it says benefits Iran and Syria.
Most former Iraqi prime ministers visited Washington earlier in their terms. Al-Sudani’s visit was postponed due to tensions between the US and Iran and regional escalation, including the Gaza war and the killing of three US soldiers in Jordan in a drone strike in late January. That was followed by a U.S. strike that killed a leader of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, whom Washington accused of planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces.
Al-Sudani came to power in late 2022 after a power struggle between prominent Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada Sadr and opposing Shiite factions close to Iran after the 2021 elections. Sadr eventually withdrew from the political process, giving the remaining Shia politicians the opportunity to form a government led by al-Sudani.
Since then, al-Sudani has tried to maintain a balancing act between Iran and America, despite being seen as close to Tehran and despite several incidents that have put his government in an embarrassing position vis-à-vis Washington.
Early in al-Sudani’s term, a U.S. citizen, Stephen Edward Troell, was shot dead by gunmen who accosted him as he drove onto the street where he lived with his family in Baghdad’s central Karrada neighborhood. An Iraqi criminal court convicted five men last August and sentenced them to life in prison in the case, which officials described as a botched kidnapping.
A few months later, Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli-Russian doctoral student at Princeton, was kidnapped while doing research in Iraq. Al-Sudani’s visit will take place about a year after Tsurkov’s kidnapping. She is believed to be being held by Kataib Hezbollah.
The senior US official said Tsurkov’s case would also be raised.
“We are concerned about this matter and are following it closely,” the official said. “We strongly condemned her kidnapping. We have urged… and continue to urge senior Iraqi officials to find Elizabeth and secure her release as soon as possible.”
Al-Sudani began his term with promises to focus on economic development and the fight against corruption, but his government has faced economic problems, including a discrepancy in the official and market exchange rates between the Iraqi dinar and the US dollar .
The currency problems stemmed in part from a U.S. tightening of dollar supplies to Iraq as part of a crackdown on money laundering and cash smuggling into Iran. The US has banned more than 20 Iraqi banks from dealing in dollars as part of the campaign.
Al-Sudani’s government recently extended Iraq’s contract to buy natural gas from Iran for another five years, which could spark American dismay.
The Iraqi prime minister will return to Iraq and meet with the Turkish president after his trip to Washington, which could ultimately lead to a resolution to a long-running dispute over the export of oil from Kurdish areas of Iraq to Turkey. Washington has been trying to restart the flow of oil.
___
Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. Eric Tucker of Washington contributed.