By SAMYA KULLAB and MURTADA FARAJ
Anti-government protesters burned an Iranian consulate in southern Iraq for a third time on Tuesday, as the country’s political leaders continued talks over selecting a new prime minister following weeks of widespread unrest.
In a separate incident, Five rockets landed inside Ain al-Asad airbase, a sprawling complex in Western Anbar which hosts US forces, without causing any casualties, said a statement from Iraq’s security media on Tuesday evening. The statement gave no further details.
Iraqi President Barham Salih met with the country’s main political blocs as a 15-day constitutional deadline to name the next prime minister nears, two Iraqi officials said. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced his resignation on Friday. The Sairoon bloc, led by influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, addressed Salih in a letter and said they gave protesters the right to support a premier of their choice.
Anti-government protesters in the holy city of Najaf burned tires and hurled them toward the main gate of the Iranian consulate, burning it for the third time in the span of a week. The building was empty at the time of the attack and there were no casualties, according to a police official.
The incident came after hours of tense standoff with security forces earlier Tuesday when protesters surrounded a key shrine in Najaf. Tens of demonstrators gathered around the Hakim shrine, demanding that al-Sadr help them enter and symbolically take control. Sadr commands Saraya Salam, a powerful militia group. A few protesters and some elderly tribal sheikhs were eventually permitted to enter the shrine and inspect it.
The protesters believe the shrine is a center for Iranian intelligence operations, the police official said.
The Hakim shrine has been the focus of recent violence. Three protesters were killed and 24 wounded on Saturday as security forces used live rounds to disperse them from the site. The southern city is the seat of the country’s Shiite religious authority.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that Iran was the uniting factor behind protests around the Middle East, saying demonstrators in Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran itself opposed the clerical regime.
While acknowledging diverse local reasons for the unrest that has swept the Middle East as well as other regions, Pompeo pointed the finger at Iran, considered an enemy by US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi resigned “because the people were demanding freedom and the security forces had killed dozens and dozens of people. That’s due in large part to Iranian influence,” Pompeo said.
“The same is true in Lebanon, the protests in Beirut,” he said at the University of Louisville.
“They want Hezbollah and Iran out of their country, out of their system as a violent and a repressive force,” he said.
He said that protests inside Iran — which Amnesty International says have killed more than 200 people — showed that Iranians were also “fed up.”
“They see a theocracy that is stealing money, the ayatollahs stealing tens and tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
In both Iraq and Lebanon, protesters have primarily called for an end to corruption, greater efforts to create jobs and a restructuring of the political system.
In Iraq, Abdel Mahdi had close ties with fellow Shiite-majority Iran, but also enjoyed support from the United States. Protesters last week torched the Iranian consulate in Najaf.
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