Furious Iraqi caller hits out at President Trump's U-turn on Qassem Soleimani
8 January 2020, 17:09 | Updated: 8 January 2020, 17:12
Two years ago "Donald Trump gave the green light to Qassem Soleimani to wipe out Iraqi-Kurdish forces who won the war against ISIS" now on Iraqi soil he has "taken him out," said a furious Iraqi caller.
"Once again Iraqs are in the centre of the world news," said Iraqi-Kurdish caller Alan from Lewisham, "a year after I was born the Iraq and the Iran war started" and Iraq was used as a "shield" against other countries in that region.
In 1991, he continued, Saddam Hussein was "destroyed" by the Americans when he had previously been a "friend".
"Qassem Soleimani was in touch with the Americans [and had] meetings with them," Alan said, "all of a sudden they want to take him out on Iraqi soil."
LBC's Shelagh Fogarty countered that in Western-Middle Eastern relations, "friends today, enemies tomorrow."
The caller said that two years ago after the Kurds had a referendum and asked for independence, "what Donald Trump did he gave the green light to this guy, Qassem Soleimani, to wipe out the Iraqi-Kurdish forces who had just won the war against ISIS."
The same man, he said, who killed hundreds of thousands of people. Now on Iraqi soil President Trump has taken this man out, he continued.
"In a year there will be a war in that region and Iraq will be the centre of that war," Alan said, "and the people who have settled there, my friends, and relatives back home last night... now they get worried. People will flee Iraq again and they will end up in Europe."
Frustrated, he said, "I don't care who rules me, as long as I don't get forced to do something, I don't care."
Alan continued that he was in England because of the deceased dictator Saddam Hussein, and when the UK and US went into Iraq to intervene, "they left a vacuum, we saw the rise of ISIS" and Qassem Soleimani's forces who are "as bad as ISIS."
Shelagh asked if Iraq is another version of Afghanistan which has been the "plaything of Russia, America and the UK for the last forty years?"
He affirmed, "Even before Afghanistan, Iraq was the centre. That's why we're here." Alan said that every time there is talk about immigration and refugees in the UK, he is "disgusted" by; "I had a great country and they destroyed it."
