Gates Sees Iran as a Consideration for U.S. Troops in Iraq - NYTimes.com: "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Tuesday that if some American troops remained in Iraq beyond the scheduled withdrawal of all United States forces by the end of the year, it would be reassuring to Persian Gulf countries, but not to Iran. “And that’s a good thing,” Mr. Gates said.
The defense secretary said that while Iraqi politicians loyal to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr clearly wanted the Americans to leave, it was debatable “how much of that is the Sadrists and how much of that is the Iranians behind the Sadrists.”
The Sadrists, who the United States says are closely allied with Iran, have long insisted that all American forces must be out of Iraq by the end of December, the deadline agreed to by Iraq and the United States.
Mr. Gates, who is to retire at the end of next month, made his comments at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research institution, in a question-and-answer session after delivering formal remarks on the defense budget. He described it as “my last major policy speech in Washington.”
