Iranian Foreign Ministry statement on withdrawal of US occupation forces from Iraq

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran congratulates the people and government of Iraq on the withdrawal of the US occupation forces and other foreign forces from Iraq after two decades of a disastrous military presence in the country, and considers this development a very important and necessary step toward consolidating Iraq’s national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence.

The tragedy of the 23-year military presence of the United States and its allies in Iraq, which followed the US military invasion of the country on March 20, 2003, under the false pretext of confronting “weapons of mass destruction,” had irreparable consequences for Iraq and the entire region. These included the killing and slaughter of more than one million Iraqis, including tens of thousands of innocent women and children; material losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars to Iraq’s physical, security, and governmental infrastructure; the destruction of the environment; and heinous war crimes such as the torture of Iraqi men and women at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as laying the groundwork for Takfiri terrorism and Daesh in Iraq and the surrounding region.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, while paying tribute to the resistance and steadfastness of the Iraqi people in the face of occupation, terrorism, and sectarianism, stresses the need to respect Iraq’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and notes that the military presence of the United States and its allies in the countries of the region has produced no result other than promoting violence, insecurity, division, and terrorism.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, while commemorating the memory of the hundreds of thousands of martyrs who lost their lives in the struggle against occupation and terrorism, particularly Martyrs Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Hajj Qassem Soleimani, stresses the need to hold the US government accountable and bring it to justice for the crimes committed and the losses inflicted on the people of Iraq and other countries throughout the period of occupation.