Iran: Trump must reassess behaviour of US forces in region

Iran says US President Donald Trump must reconsider behavior of occupying American forces in the region instead of leveling groundless accusations against other countries.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi on Friday rejected the “baseless” accusations leveled by the US president against Iran regarding the recent attack on a US-occupied base in Iraq.

“Instead of making dangerous moves and baseless accusations, Mr Trump had better thoroughly reassess the presence and behavior of his forces in the region,” Mousavi said.

He also urged the US to seriously avoid spreading the virus of pinning the blame on others and making accusations with the aim of justifying its illogical behaviour and evading responsibility.

The spokesman suggested that such attacks on US interests in Iraq are the consequences of its illegal presence in the Arab country, stressing that Washington cannot blame others for the Iraqi people’s reaction to the US assassination and slaughter of their commanders and fighters.

A rocket attack on Wednesday hit a military base housing American troops near the capital Baghdad. The attack against Taji military camp killed three members of the US-led coalition, including two Americans and one Briton.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack in which some 18 107mm Katyusha rockets struck the US-occupied camp.

However, Trump on Thursday claimed that the attackers were a group that “most likely looked like it could be backed by Iran.”

He later authorized the US military to respond to the rocket attack by launching a string of airstrikes against multiple locations of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, as well as the Iraqi army and police. 

US wages airstrikes against multiple Hashd Sha’abi positions across Iraq

The United States wages out a string of airstrikes against the positions of Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces across Iraq.

‘Taji attack linked to Soleimani assassination’

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani on Friday suggested that there might be links between the US assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq and its claims about the rocket attack on Taji base.

"In my visit to Iraq, I called on the country's officials to find the domestic traces of the operation to assassinate Martyrs Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and disclose their names," he tweeted.

"It seems there are commonalities between the assassination plot and the US claim about the attack on Taji base," Shamkhani noted.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Hashd al-Shaabi and General Soleimani were assassinated along with a number of their comrades in a US drone attack near the Baghdad International Airport on January 3, 2020.

Following the attack, Iraqi resistance groups vowed to retaliate the assassination of their top commander.

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