Trump to keep base in Iraq to ‘watch’ Iran

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump stood by his plans to reduce the US footprint in the Middle East but said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday that he intends to maintain a presence in Iraq, in part to keep tabs on Iran.
Trump also said he’d ignore the advice of intelligence community officials on Iran if their views run counter to his own. He has scoffed at their finding that while Iran is a major threat, it is abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal that the US exited. “When my intelligence people tell me how wonderful Iran is—if you don’t mind, I’m going to just go by my own counsel,” Trump said in an interview with CBS News, according to a transcript provided by the network.
US forces will stay in Iraq indefinitely, Trump said, in part to be able “watch” Iran from nearby. “We might as well keep it,” he said of the Al Asad Air Base in Anbar province, which he visited in late December. “I want to be able to watch Iran. All I want to do is be able to watch. We have an unbelievable and expensive military base built in Iraq. It’s perfectly situated for looking at all over different parts of the troubled Middle East rather than pulling up.”
At the same time, Trump reiterated plans to pull troops from Syria, though he declined to provide a timetable for the move—announced abruptly in late 2018—saying only that they would leave “in a matter of time.”

Endless Wars
Trump is struggling to reconcile his campaign promises to end long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with the advice of top military and intelligence officials—as well as many key congressional Republicans—that the US needs to maintain a robust presence in the Middle East. The intelligence chiefs told Congress last week that the IS and other militant groups in the region remain a threat while Iran is complying with the accord it signed with Trump’s predecessor to halt its nuclear weapons program. Trump pointed to his victory in the 2016 Republican presidential primary as a sign that he has the right view—or at least one popular among his party’s voters— of US involvement in the Middle East.