On 31 December, protesters in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad set fire to the outer fence of the US embassy and then the checkpoint gate, reportedly in response to recent American airstrikes against the Iraqi Shia Kata'ib Hezbollah militia. Washington blamed Iran for the raid, while US President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with retaliation.
Former Obama-era undersecretary for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, lambasted Trump for his foreign policy, claiming that it has led to the attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad.
“It is President Donald Trump's failed policy toward Iran that has brought us to this combustible moment,” she wrote in a column for USA Today, adding that even “confronting Iran over its nuclear program and malign behavior elsewhere”, the US has “maintained an uneasy coexistence in Iraq, where Tehran holds considerable sway.”
According to the former official, the working coexistence “was destroyed when Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal.”
She accused the president of “diminishing” the US state department and other government agencies that participate in the creation and administration of US foreign policy, and pointed at the outcomes in Iraq and Iran, as well as in North Korea, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Middle East, Russia, China and Hong Kong.
“Having diminished our State Department, intelligence agencies and military, the very institutions that could have…
