Donald Trump and the Iranian leadership have exchanged more threats of retaliatory attacks as US allies began to pull their soldiers out of Iraq for safety, in anticipation of an upsurge in violence following last week’s drone strike killing of a top Iranian general.
The secretary of Iran’s national security council, Ali Shamkhani, said 13 “revenge scenarios” were being considered in the wake of the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds force, and that even the most limited options would be a “historic nightmare” for the US.
Ali Shamkhani told the Tasnim news agency: “The 27 US bases that are closest to Iran’s border are already on high alert; they know that the response is likely to include medium-range & long-range missiles.”
Trump responded to Iranian threats in remarks to the press at the White House “We’re totally prepared. And likewise, we’re prepared to attack if we have to,” he said.
But he appeared to draw back from his earlier threats to target Iranian cultural sites, a potential war crime.
“If that’s what the law is, I like to obey the law,” he said, but he added: “They kill our people, they blow up our people and then we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions. But I’m OK with it … I will say this, if Iran does anything that they shouldn’t be doing, they’re going to be suffering the consequences and very strongly.”
Trump said his long-term intention was withdraw the 5,200 US troops currently in Iraq, but not right away as the Iraqi government and parliament have demanded.
“I think we’ve done a fantastic job but eventually, we want to be able to let Iraq run its own affairs,” he said. “We want to get out. But this isn’t the right point.”
When the US did leave, the president insisted, Iraq would have to reimburse Washington for the infrastructure investments Washington has made over a nearly 17-year presence.
US allies have already begun leaving Baghdad, which was buzzing as night fell with helicopters flying in and out of the city’s fortified diplomatic district, known as the Green Zone. Canada, which currently leads the Nato training mission, said it was pulling out some of its 500 troops, and Germany said its presence in Iraq would be “temporarily thinned out”. Most of the Nato troops withdrawing were reported to be heading for Kuwait.
“We have temporarily suspended our training on the ground, and we are taking all precautions necessary to protect our people,” a Nato spokesperson said. “This includes the temporary repositioning of some personnel to different locations both inside and outside of Iraq.”
The US-led coalition to counter Isis is also repositioning its forces to lessen their vulnerability to attack. Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said that non-essential personnel were being moved from Baghdad to Taji, about 19 miles (30km) to the north.
Observers said that the escalating military rhetoric in Tehran could leave Iranian leaders with little option but to attempt a major counter-attack, or else suffer an extraordinary loss of face. The warnings have led US bases in Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to be placed on maximum alert status.
Members of the so-called Resistance axis, including pro-Iranian militias from Iraq, will meet in Tehran in the next 48 hours to discuss tactics, it was reported.
The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, insisted the Iranian response to US state terrorism would be proportionate, and not conducted by surrogate forces.
“This is an act of aggression against Iran, and it amounts to an armed attack against Iran, and we will respond. But we will respond proportionately – not disproportionately … We are not lawless like President Trump,” Zarif said, adding that the attack would occur at the time of Iran’s choosing.
“Unlike the United States, we do not take cowardly terrorist acts,” he said. “When we do it, we will declare it.”
The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, confirmed that forces in the region were braced for Iranian reprisal strikes, but he said the US would prefer a diplomatic solution.
“We’re prepared for the worst. We hope that cooler heads in Tehran will prevail and de-escalate the situation,” Esper told CNN. “We are not looking to start a war with Iran but we are prepared to finish one … What we would like to see is the situation de-escalated and for Tehran to sit down with us and begin a discussion about a better way ahead.”
In a further sign that the Trump administration was anxious to find a way of defusing the brewing conflict, Bloomberg News reported that Pompeo sent a cable to all US embassies on Thursday ordering diplomats not to meet with Iranian opposition groups without permission, explaining that it could jeopardise diplomacy with Iran’s government.”
Despite its declared openness to unconditional talks, the US has denied Zarif a visa to travel to New York to address the UN security council on the crisis. The refusal of a visa marked a violation of the headquarters agreement the US signed at the UN’s founding.
Asked about the decision on Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, insisted the US “will always comply with our obligations under the UN requirements and the headquarters agreement, and we will do so in this particular instance and more broadly every day”. But he did not explain how refusing Zarif a visa could be reconciled with that claim.
The Trump administration also did little to clarify the confusion that arose on Monday over its intentions in Iraq. Pentagon officials had said that a letter sent to the Iraqi government from the US taskforce commander in Iraq, announcing a troop departure, had been a draft released by mistake.
Iraq’s acting prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, however, insisted that the letter had been signed and that it had initially been sent back to the US commander over a translation query, and then it had been redelivered with a corrected translation.
“They said it’s a draft. OK, it’s a draft. But we received it. As a state, how are we supposed to act? We should get a second letter to clarify so we can clarify to our people too,” Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November but has stayed on in a caretaker role, said, according to Agence France-Presse. “If I don’t trust you and you don’t trust me, how are we supposed to proceed?”
In a prerecorded television address he insisted the US would have to leave.
“We have no exit but this, otherwise we are speeding toward confrontation,” Abdul Mahdi said, adding that Iraq would have to take a “historic decision” to implement the expulsion. “Otherwise we will not be taken seriously,” he added.
