SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The United States is working to help build up Iraqi prime minister and his team in order to be free and independent, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.
Pompeo said in an interview with Al Arabiya that the United States had been in Iraq for two things, one to defeat Islamic State (ISIS) militants and to ensure that ISIS does not rise and pose risk to the American people.
“Second, we are working to help build up prime minister [Mustafa] al-Kadhimi and his team so that they can be free, independent and sovereign in exactly the way the Iraqi people are demanding,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo further said that the Iraqis did not want to be under the “jackboot of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and that they “want a free, independent Iraq.”
