The United States will not be seizing Iraqi oil, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Monday in Baghdad, breaking from a controversial suggestion made by President Trump.
“I think all of us here in this room — all of us in America — have generally paid for our gas and oil all along, and I am sure we will continue to do so in the future,” Mattis said during an unannounced tour of Iraq, which is in the midst of a battle to vanquish ISIS from western Mosul. “We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil.”
During the presidential campaign and on his first full day as president, Trump said the US should’ve taken Iraqi oil after invading the country in 2003.
“To the victor belong the spoils,” Trump said in remarks to the CIA. “So we should have kept the oil,” he said. “But, OK, maybe you’ll have another chance.”
The comments rankled lawmakers across the country, who pressured Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to reduce cooperation with the US.
Mattis is in Iraq to begin discussions on how to defeat ISIS in there and in Syria.
“We’re going to make sure we’re certain we’ve got good, shared situation awareness of what we face as we work together and fight alongside each other to destroy ISIS,” the defense secretary told reporters.
Trump signed an order Jan. 28 giving Mattis and top military leaders 30 days to hatch a new plan to crush ISIS.
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