President Trump, who has said he wants to withdraw US forces from Syria and Afghanistan, revealed that he wants the military to remain in Iraq to keep a close watch on Iran.
Despite calling the decision to go to war in Iraq “one of the greatest mistakes” the country has ever made, he said the US should take advantage of its strong military presence in Iraq.
“We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it,” Trump told CBS’ “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. “And one of the reasons I want to keep it is because I want to be looking a little bit at Iran because Iran is a real problem.”
Anchor Margaret Brennan asked the commander-in-chief wanted the troops there to “be able to strike in Iran?”
“No,” Trump replied. “Because I want to be able to watch Iran.”
“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,” Trump continued. “And this is what a lot of people don’t understand. We’re going to keep watching and we’re going to keep seeing and if there’s trouble, if somebody is looking to do nuclear weapons or other things, we’re going to know it before they do.”
Trump last May pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear accord that was brokered by the Obama administration and a number of world powers – including France, Britain and Germany – because he said the pact “should never have been made.”
But his intelligence chiefs said in testimony last week that Iran is abiding by the details of the 2015 agreement.
Trump said he doesn’t agree with their conclusions.
“I am going to trust the intelligence that I’m putting there, but I will say this: my intelligence people, if they said in fact that Iran is a wonderful kindergarten, I disagree with them 100 percent,” the president said. “It is a vicious country that kills many people. When you talk about torture and so many other things.”
He said he was skeptical of the US intelligence community and faulted their assessment that the US had to invade Iraq to stop President Saddam Hussein from using the weapons of mass destruction he had stockpiled.
“Those intel people didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and they got us tied up in a war that we should have never been in. And we’ve spent seven trillion dollars in the Middle East and we have lost lives,” Trump said.