BAGHDAD _ Iraq's parliament voted on Sunday to expel U.S. troops from the country, in an extraordinarily rapid and decisive response to the Trump administration's targeted killing of a top Iranian general at the Baghdad airport on Friday.
The preliminary vote could result in the removal of more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers and unspecified number of contractors stationed in the country. After invading Iraq in 2003 and ousting Saddam Hussein, the United States maintained a troop presence in the country as it was besieged, first by civil war and then by the murderous insurgency of Islamic State. All the while, Iran's influence in Iraq _ both countries are largely Shiite Muslim nations in a region dominated by Sunni Muslim _ continued to grow.
The vote in parliament, which came after a session on Sunday called by Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, represents a major widening of the tensions that have followed the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani on Friday.
The American military was on alert over the weekend as Iranian fighters marched through the streets of Baghdad and calls to eject the United States emanated from around the country.
On Sunday, the U.S. military announced that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq was temporarily halting operations in support of Iraqi forces battling militants of Islamic State. It said that for now, the "first priority" would be protecting American forces, rather than training Iraqi ones.
The statement announcing the "paused" activities did not specifically cite the heightened threat in the wake of Suleimani's killing, but pointed to repeated rocket attacks over the past two months by the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah. The statement said the American-led coalition expected at some point to return "full attention and efforts back to our shared goal of ensuring the lasting defeat" of Islamic State.
The extremist group, which once held sway over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, was driven out of the last of its territory, and its leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, killed himself during a U.S. raid in October. But Islamic State remnants still pose a threat.
In Parliament, Abdul Mahdi presented lawmakers with the option of ending foreign troops' presence as quickly as possible using "urgent procedures" or choosing a more gradual drawdown.
He urged them to opt for the accelerated timetable.
"Even with the possibility of complications we might face, in the end it is the better option, in terms of practicality, benefit and sovereignty," said Abdul Mahdi.
"It's in the interest of Iraq and the United States, in light of these circumstances, to end the presence after the recent developments and seeking to preserve friendly relations between the two sides."
In his speech, Abdul Mahdi outlined the legality behind U.S. troops in the country, adding that their presence came at Iraq's request in 2011 and 2014, when Iraq faced the existential threat of Islamic State.
Though those troops had been vital to Iraq's counter-Islamic State plans, Friday's attack, which in addition to Suleimani, also killed Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a top militia leader. The session had a torturous start, with legislators struggling to achieve quorum.
The vote was finally taken with 173 of the 329 Iraqi lawmakers, almost all of them from the Shiite sect.
"The parliament has voted to commit the Iraqi government to cancel its request to the international coalition for help to fight [Islamic State]," parliament speaker Mohammed Halbusi later declared.
Interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo cut off host Margaret Brennan when she mentioned the just-passed approval of expelling the U.S. military from Iraq. He suggested that Iraq's leadership would ultimately decide to keep U.S. troops in the country.
"It is the United States that is prepared to help the Iraqi people get what they deserve, and continue our mission to take down terrorism from [Islamic State] and others in the region," he said. "That is in defense of the Iraqi people, and it is good for America too."
Parliament's vote in favor of canceling the U.S.'s mandate comes as Washington has dispatched thousands of additional troops to the region to counter what it says is an increasingly belligerent Iran, even as it insists it will continue its role to prevent a resurgence of the extremists.
Nevertheless, for some, including Muqtada Sadr, a cleric who in recent years has spoken out against both U.S. and Iranian influence in the country, Sunday's decision didn't go far enough.
In a statement he posted on Twitter, he described parliament's response to the U.S. attacks as "feeble." He called for the immediate closure of the "American embassy of evil" and U.S. bases in the country as well as a boycott on American products. He also demanded that contact with the U.S. be criminalized, and that the various paramilitary factions, both inside and outside Iraq, convene a meeting so as to form a transnational paramilitary force.
"And if parliament doesn't do this," he vowed, "we will have a greater action."
Staff writer Laura King in Washington contributed to this report.
