US President receives Iraqi Prime Minister when Middle East is "tense as a bowstring"

US President Joe Biden is expected to host the head of Iraq 's government this week and join them in talks amid heightened tensions across the Middle East over the more than six-month war in Gaza and Iran's unprecedented retaliatory attack on Israel over the weekend.

As Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Israel on April 13, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani was scheduled to depart for Washington, DC, for a seven-day official visit. A statement from Al-Sudani’s office on April 13 confirmed his departure from Baghdad.

In his first visit to the White House as Iraqi prime minister, Al-Sudani is scheduled to meet with President Biden in the Oval Office on April 15. The Iraqi leader plans to speak with American businesses, the Iraqi community and think tanks in Washington DC before traveling to Houston to discuss cooperation with American energy companies.

Al-Sudani’s trip comes as security concerns have grown sharply in an already tense region, raising questions about the two-decade-old U.S. military presence in Iraq. A U.S. Patriot battery in Irbil, Iraq, shot down at least one ballistic missile fired by Iran toward Israel on April 13, according to U.S. officials.

In addition, Iranian proxy forces have begun attacks against US interests across the region from inside Iraq, all of which puts the April 15 meeting between the US president and the Iraqi prime minister in the spotlight.

World - US President receives Iraqi Prime Minister when Middle East is — Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed al-Sudani left Baghdad for Washington DC on April 13, 2024, leading a delegation of government officials, members of parliament and representatives of the private sector. Photo: France24

The talks will include discussions on regional stability and future U.S. troop deployments, and will also focus on economic, trade and energy issues that have become top priorities for the Iraqi government, U.S. officials said.

Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are both expected to raise the issue of the U.S. military presence in their meetings with Al-Sudani. “It’s not the primary focus of the visit … but it will almost certainly come up,” a senior U.S. official said last week.

The United States and Iraq began formal talks in January on ending the presence in Iraq of a coalition formed to help the Iraqi government fight terrorism, with about 2,000 U.S. troops remaining in the country under an agreement with Baghdad. Iraqi officials have repeatedly called for those forces to leave.

The two sides have a fragile relationship partly due to Iran's significant influence in Iraq, where an alliance of Iran-backed groups brought Mr. Al-Sudani to power in October 2022.

Mr. Al-Sudani began his term with promises to focus on economic development and fighting corruption, but his government has faced economic difficulties, including a gap in the official and market exchange rates between the Iraqi dinar and the U.S. dollar.

The currency problems stem in part from the US tightening the supply of US dollars to Iraq as part of a crackdown on money laundering and smuggling to Iran. The US has barred more than 20 Iraqi banks from dealing in US dollars as part of the campaign.

Al-Sudani's government recently extended Iraq's contract to buy natural gas from Iran for another five years, which may displease the Americans.

Iraq's prime minister will return to the country and meet with the Turkish president after a trip to Washington DC, which could finally lead to a resolution to a long-running dispute over oil exports from Iraq's Kurdish region to Turkey. Washington has been seeking to restore the flow of oil .

Minh Duc (According to AP, Xinhua, Wilson Center)

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