Trump’s Announcements: Where Is the Washington Conference Headed?

The announcements made on Feb. 5 on CBS by U.S. President Donald Trump are extremely clear and there is no need for further analysis by anyone, least of all Ayham al-Samarrai.* It is clear because Trump simply reiterated what he has already said over the past two years and during his election campaign. It is likewise clear that he will do what he promised. The time is drawing nearer – “closer to you than your jugular vein”** – for any Iraqi who belongs to another country and not to Iraq. Soon enough we will hear loud shouting about “cleansing” Iran’s mullahs and their filthy militias from Iraq and the region. Such talk will follow the Poland Conference to be held in the middle of February and attended by countries supportive of the U.S. orientation toward regime change in Iran. This shouting will also precede the National Iraqi Opposition Conference that will take place in Washington on March 13, 2019.

Trump’s made the following clear announcements:

1. Regime change in Iraq against Saddam Hussein was a catastrophic U.S. error;

2. The U.S. has never withdrawn, and will never withdraw, from Iraq. It will withdraw its armies from Syria and Afghanistan and send them to Iraq;

3. The U.S. presence in Iraq is to protect U.S. interests and to strike Iran’s mullahs at the proper time and place;

4. Iran and its mullahs are the leading state sponsor of terrorism and we need to act to end it;

5. Iraq will not act as the Iranian regime’s economic executor. The U.S. is determined to use all its means of intelligence to uncover and imprison those who collaborate with Iran;

6. Everything is on the table and nothing is written in stone in the Middle East. America will not give up an inch of its gains. (Here, of course, Trump means Iraq.);

7. The U.S. Army is in Iraq to protect the interests of America and Iraq, and to defend Iraq from the Iranian and Islamic State militias.

The American president was very clear that once again he is building up his army in Iraq. He was also clear about his determination to eliminate his enemies completely – from top to bottom – even including those spies from neighboring countries like Iran.

Here I would like to remind my people in the western region not to enter into any conflict against the U.S. presence in Iraq. Do not let yourselves be driven into this conflict by Iran and its Iraqi agents. The opposite of a U.S. presence in Iraq is a divisive and sectarian Iranian presence. We must love Iraq and our Shia Arab brothers in the south. We must not fight the Americans.

Do not forget that our cities were destroyed by an Iranian conspiracy executed by its agent Nouri al-Maliki.***

Whoever wants to fight the U.S. Army on behalf of the Iranians and their Iraqi accomplices is welcome to do it. May God protect them, “lest their evil overtake them and they are destroyed like the people of the elephants before them.”*

My Shia Arab brothers in the south, do not ignore what is happening in the name of the Shia sect. This is a trick by our neighbor Iran, a deception intended to divide, separate and destroy Iraq. You are its best sons. Do not allow these cowardly outsiders to come between you and your brothers in the western region. You are all Qahtani Arabs whether you are Sunni or Shia. You descended from the same ancestor, Qahtan, and you all believe that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet, may peace and blessings be upon him.

Do not enter into war with the U.S. Army, which is coming to save you from being colonized by the Iranian mullahs and the Afghans, and from any other outsider who snatches our land, puts on his turban and starts to lead and sow division among you.

The current government is a puppet government for Iran and it will remain so unless it is awoken from its deep sleep. A salvation government is on its way to you, led by a brave national Iraqi hero and civilian technocrats.

Unify yourselves. Do not listen to the “turbans” who call for you to fight among yourselves or against the U.S. Army. Unify and be one strong and capable Islamic community. Be a single sovereign state stretching from Zakho in the west to the 1958 Kuwaiti border in the east. God is with us, Ayham al-Samarrai.

*Editor’s note: Ayham al-Samarrai is the former Iraqi electricity minister.

**Editor’s note: This phrase is a reference to the Quran.

***Editor’s note: Nouri al-Maliki was the former prime minister of Iraq.