{"id":31146,"date":"2019-01-30T10:22:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T10:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31146"},"modified":"2019-01-30T10:22:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T10:22:56","slug":"king-of-spain-visits-iraq-first-in-40-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31146","title":{"rendered":"King of Spain visits Iraq, first in 40 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\" data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1444261\/middle-east\" readability=\"46\">\n<p>\nBAGHDAD: \u00a0Spain\u2019s King Felipe VI on Wednesday visited special forces helping Iraq fight extremists, during the first trip by a Spanish monarch to the war-ravaged country in four decades, a diplomat said.<br \/>The king, whose country is a member of an international coalition battling Daesh, also later met President Barham Saleh.<br \/>Iraq in 2017 declared victory over Daesh following a bruising months-long campaign backed by the coalition, which continues to carry out operations against the extremists.<br \/>Spain, which took part in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq that overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, went on to support Iraqi troops as they battled to roll back Daesh, which seized a third of the country including second city Mosul in 2014.<br \/>Hundreds of Spanish military instructors remain in the country.<br \/>King Felipe is one of a series of leaders to visit Baghdad since the start of the year, including US President Donald Trump, who drew criticism for failing to meet a single Iraqi official.<br \/>Baghdad has also hosted the chief diplomats of its two main allies, Washington and Tehran &#8212; themselves bitter enemies.<br \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8TevdiKdfTs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nIraq\u2019s precarious position has been complicated by Trump\u2019s shock decision last month to pull troops from neighboring Syria.<br \/>That has prompted pro-Iran factions to intensify their calls for an accelerated withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BAGHDAD: \u00a0Spain\u2019s King Felipe VI on Wednesday visited special forces helping Iraq fight extremists, during the first trip by a Spanish monarch to the war-ravaged country in four decades, a diplomat said.The king, whose country is a member of an international coalition battling Daesh, also later met President Barham Saleh.Iraq in 2017 declared victory over&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}