© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Iraqi leaders congratulate Trump and commit to strengthening ties

In Iraq, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani congratulated Donald Trump and said he wanted to strengthen ties with the United States.

"Iraq reaffirms its steadfast commitment to strengthening bilateral relations with the United States, grounded in mutual respect and shared interests," he said in a statement.

And Iraqi President Abdullatif J Rashid said he hopes the administration can “foster much-needed stability and constructive dialogue in the region”.

In 2021, Baghdad’s investigative court issued an arrest warrant for Trump following the U.S. airstrike that killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis — the Iraqi deputy head of the Iran-backed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces.

Shia militias backed by Iran have major political influence in Iraq. But the Iraqi Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee said it intends to engage with a Trump administration regardless of the arrest warrant, underscoring that it is in Iraq’s national interest to do so.

Copyright 2024 NPR

Ruth Sherlock is an International Correspondent with National Public Radio. She's based in Beirut and reports on Syria and other countries around the Middle East. She was previously the United States Editor for the Daily Telegraph, covering the 2016 US election. Before moving to the US in the spring of 2015, she was the Telegraph's Middle East correspondent.