Trump meets Iraqi Prime Minister at White House, vows ‘more’ | Donald Trump News

Iraq’s prime minister says relations with the US are changing from military to economic, and has vowed to disarm the group.

The President of the United States Donald Trump and the Prime Minister of Iraq Ali al-Zaidi will meet at the White House in Washington, DC, and both leaders have pledged to expand economic ties and boost Iraq’s oil production.

Tuesday’s meeting came after Trump threw his support behind al-Zaidi, a businessman with no political background, and publicly challenged former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to become prime minister earlier this year.

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Al-Maliki, a separatist seen as having close ties to Iran, later stepped down from the conflict in April.

The Iraqi government has already said that waiting several oil and gas agreements to be signed during al-Zaidi’s visit to the US, while Trump also pledged several agreements in the Oval Office meeting.

He called al-Zaidi “a great winner, a new hero”.

“Iraq has a lot of potential because of their oil and other things, but because of their oil, and we’re going to do a lot of it,” Trump said.

“We will create more jobs in both countries, and we will produce more oil. More oil is coming out,” he said.

Al-Zaidi, meanwhile, said “this trip was not like any other trip”, calling it the beginning of “economic cooperation”.

He said the US-Iraq relationship is moving from military to economic.

Both and Trump said that the remaining US troops in Iraq, which are believed to be at least 2,000, will leave Iraq by September 30. This is the day al-Zaidi promised that the forces operating in Iraq will disarm.

Iraq has been struggling with the competing influences of Tehran and Washington in its domestic politics, with tensions over the continued presence of US troops, the ongoing war with ISIL (ISIS), and the pull of Iranian-allied forces.

In his own first speech in parliament as prime minister, al-Zaidi vowed to disarm the country’s various militias, which have been in power since the US-led war in Iraq in 2003.

He did not say how he would achieve that great goal. Before his departure, the Islamic Resistance Army in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia in the region, including Iraq, said it would reject the results of al-Zaidi’s visit.

Iraq has also become one of several fronts in the US-Israel war with Iran that began on February 28, with the conflict drawing to a close and its latest escalation in al-Zaidi’s visit.

Iraq’s economy has been hit hard by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where nearly 90 percent of its 3.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil flows through the water.

The latest war has called into question the future of the memorandum of understanding (MoU), which in June offered a temporary end to the war, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and the removal of the US military fence in Iran.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, al-Zaidi also said Iraq needs a “fair share” from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Iraq has been pushing to increase its oil production, with al-Zaidi saying the demand is a result of the destruction caused by the war against ISIL, which Iraq declared victorious in 2017.

“The damage in Iraq is over $400bn, and to this day, some Iraqis still have their homes destroyed and are living in camps,” he said. “I have a plan to return them to their homes, that’s why I want a fair share of Iraq in OPEC.”