Baghdad says US promised continuing support for Iraq against Daesh

US Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday assured Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi of continued US support to defeat Daesh, the Iraqi government said in a statement.

The two discussed the situation in Syria and the war on Daesh in a phone call from Pence following Friday’s US strikes on a Syrian airbase to punish a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians this week in an area held by the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Pence “affirmed that US policy in the region didn’t change, its priority is to defeat Daesh in Iraq and the region,” said a statement from Al-Abadi’s office.

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner visits Iraq -US official

The Shia-led Iraqi government issued a statement on Friday in reaction to the events in Syria reflecting a difficult balancing act between its alliance with the United States and with the Shia theocracy in Iran, a key backer of Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.

The Iraqi statement condemned the chemical attack, without naming Al-Assad, calling instead for an international investigation to identify the perpetrator.

The statement also criticised “the hasty interventions” that followed the chemical attack, in an apparent reference to the US strikes.

Iraq warns against ‘hasty measures’ in Syria

Iraq’s veiled criticisms of the United States are unsurprising, as Baghdad ordinarily adopts foreign policy postures similar to neighbouring Iran, the most powerful player in Iraqi politics. Shia Iran exerts much influence over Baghdad’s decision-making, having sheltered most of the main Shia political actors in Iraq today when they were in exile during the reign of President Saddam Hussein.

A US-led coalition has been providing air and ground support to Iraqi forces and Iran-backed Shia jihadist extremists battling Daesh militants, allowing them to recapture most cities they had overran in 2014 in Sunni areas of northern and western Iraq.

An Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia jihadist militia said on Friday it would keep on fighting in Syria in support of Assad, despite the US missile strikes.

“Our movement is proceeding on the path of jihad and resistance, and our position concerning the war in Syria won’t change,” Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba (HHN) spokesman Hashim Al-Musawi said in a statement.

HHN are the Iraqi branch of the Shia jihadist Lebanese Hezbollah, and are closely connected to that group as well as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

HHN is one of the groups accused by human rights organisations of killing scores of fleeing civilians in the Syrian city of Aleppo last year. They were involved in massacres and atrocities, as well as sexual violence against Syrian women along with dozens of other Shia jihadist groups.

Iran, by leveraging its ties with Iraq’s Shia community, has emerged as the main power broker in Iraq after the United States withdrew its troops in 2011.

Internally displaced people, who fled from the clashes between the Iraqi Army and Daesh terrorists, wait in a line to receive humanitarian aid in Nineveh, Iraq on 29 March 2017 [Yunus Keleş/Anadolu]