US defense secretary visits Iraq: ‘We’re not here to seize anybody’s oil’

With his boss having banned Iraqi citizens from entering the US and threatening to seize its oil, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis’s goodwill visit to Baghdad was always going to be a tough sell.

But within hours of arriving in the Iraqi capital on Monday, Mattis had told senior officials that the US would do neither, brushing aside earlier suggestions by Donald Trump that had strained already fraught ties on the eve of the most decisive phase of the war against the Islamic State (Isis).

 

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