Unrest at US embassy reveals Iraqis are fed up with American ‘occupiers’
Anti-American sentiment has taken deep root in Iraqi society and ultimately fueled the fiery siege of the US Embassy in Baghdad, as the locals blame Washington for the sorry state of Iraq, military and political analysts tell RT.
Chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” a crowd of protesters surrounded the US diplomatic mission on Tuesday, angered by the death of two dozen Iraqis in US airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia over the weekend.
At one point, the mob set a checkpoint at the entrance on fire and attempted to storm the embassy. Dozens of people made it inside the heavily-guarded compound and delivered some damage to the property before eventually retreating as a force of US Marines backed by attack helicopters arrived as reinforcements.
What unfolded in Baghdad “of course, allows [us] to draw parallels” with the attacks on US diplomatic missions in Benghazi in 2012, Grigory Lukyanov, senior lecturer at the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, told RT. Four Americans died in that attack, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Lukyanov also drew comparisons with the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, following the 1979 Iranian revolution, when 52 American diplomats and staff were held hostage for 444 days.
“There’s nothing surprising” about the embassy in Baghdad being targeted by protesters, Lukyanov pointed out. The US has been directly involved in Iraqi affairs since the invasion in 2003 and the locals now blame the “foreign sponsors” of the Iraqi government for its inability to improve their security and well-being.
The operation against backed Kataib Hezbollah, launched without any approval from Baghdad, became “yet another sign for the ‘Iraqi street’ that the Americans are behaving like occupiers,” he added. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi called it an “an unacceptable vicious assault” and said the US had violated the sovereignty of his country.
“The level of anti-American sentiment is as high in Iraq as it was in Libya and Iran. It’s not something that’s fueled by some military or political entities,” Lukyanov told RT.
The US don’t want their long-established relations with Iraq to be held hostage by the ongoing unrest.
President Donald Trump declared the embassy safe on Tuesday afternoon and called the entire thing an “anti-Benghazi.” The embassy building itself wasn’t breached and would not be evacuated, a State Department spokesperson said.
https://www.rt.com/news/477210-iraq-embassy-siege-analysts/