WANA (Oct 04) – Iran’s Foreign Ministry has congratulated the Iraqi people and government on the withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces from Iraq, describing the development as an important step toward strengthening Iraq’s national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.

 

In a statement issued on Saturday, October 3, the ministry said the departure of U.S. occupying forces and other foreign troops after two decades of what it described as a disastrous military presence in Iraq was an important and necessary development.

 

The statement said the 23-year U.S. and allied military presence in Iraq, which followed the U.S. invasion of the country on March 20, 2003, under what it described as the false pretext of confronting “weapons of mass destruction,” had caused irreversible consequences for Iraq and the wider region.

 

According to the ministry, those consequences included the killing of more than one million Iraqis, including tens of thousands of women and children, hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Iraq’s infrastructure, security and government institutions, environmental destruction, and what it described as grave war crimes, including the torture of Iraqi men and women at Abu Ghraib prison.

 

The ministry also said the U.S. and its allies had created conditions that facilitated the emergence of Takfiri terrorism and ISIS in Iraq and the surrounding region.

 

Iran’s Foreign Ministry praised the Iraqi people’s resistance and resilience in the face of occupation, terrorism and sectarianism, while stressing the need to respect Iraq’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

 

It said the U.S. military presence in regional countries had produced nothing but violence, insecurity, division and terrorism. The ministry also commemorated the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the fight against occupation and terrorism, particularly Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

 

It stressed the need to hold the U.S. government accountable and make it answer for crimes committed and damages inflicted on the Iraqi people and other countries during the period of occupation.