Iraq
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (left). Photo: AP. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (right). Photo: Abadi's office
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi foreign ministry on Monday denied an alleged meeting between former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad in 2017, saying the former US diplomat never visited the Iraqi capital that year.
An excerpt from Pompeo’s new autobiography, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, describes a conversation he allegedly had with Abadi in 2017 inside the premier’s palace, narrating it as an episode in the chronicles that eventually culminated in Washington’s decision to assassinate Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Pompeo said he had offered the Iraqi PM Washington's financial support in return for halting Iranian electricity imports, otherwise risk putting Baghdad’s power grid under American sanctions.
“Prime Minister Abadi looked me dead in the eye and said, “Mr. Director, when you leave, Qasem Soleimani will come see me. You may take away my money. He will take away my life.” Hard rules to live by,” wrote the former US diplomat.
The Iraqi foreign ministry denied Pompeo’s claims on Monday, stressing that the diplomat never visited Baghdad in 2017, nor met with Abadi.
Abadi’s Victory Alliance also denied the allegations two days prior.
“What Pompeo said contradicts the facts and the course of events… his claim that Soleimani threatens the highest authority in Iraq is a justification for the assassination, which represents an assault on Iraqi sovereignty. We challenge any American institution to officially document these allegations, bearing in mind that all meetings are archived,” read a statement from the alliance.
Pompeo did not visit Al-Abadi in Baghdad, and his allegations are unfounded and part of the American internal partisan struggle.
— Haider Al-Abadi حيدر العبادي (@HaiderAlAbadi) January 28, 2023
Sanctions on Iran were re-imposed end of 2018. They were lifted in 2016 after the nuclear deal. What Pompeo said about sanctions has no basis in 2017.
Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in a US airstrike on January 3, 2020, alongside Muhandis, deputy chief of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
The strike was ordered by former US President Donald Trump in response to the constant attacks by IRGC-allied groups on the US embassy in Baghdad and military bases housing coalition and US forces across the country.
Soleimani and Muhandis were controversial figures in Iraq and the wider region. Muhandis was a founder of pro-Iran militia group Kataib Hezbollah accused by the international community of orchestrating the attacks on bases and numerous kidnappings of activists and protesters. Their killing stunned the Iranian establishment and their regional allies but was welcomed by the US allies in the region.
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