Trump’s Iraq Envoy meets US security chiefs ahead of Baghdad trip
Shafaq News– Washington
US President Donald Trump’s envoy to Iraq, Mark Savaya, said on Friday that he plans to engage “with the right decision makers” in Iraq to address developments on the ground “for the benefit of the Iraqi people,” as he prepares for an upcoming visit to Baghdad.
Speaking after a meeting at the White House with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka, Savaya said the talks focused on the issues he plans to raise during his trip to the Iraqi capital.
Today, I finalized a meeting at the White House with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Director of Counterterrorism.We agreed that the issues discussed will be addressed during my upcoming visit to Iraq, WHERE I WILL ENGAGE WITH THE RIGHT DECISION MAKERS to… pic.twitter.com/1ZXKDkcfUW
— Mark Savaya (@Mark_Savaya) January 15, 2026
He did not provide further details on the agenda or timing of the visit.
The meeting comes amid a broader US review of suspected illicit financial activity in Iraq that Savaya disclosed a day earlier, carried out in coordination with the US Treasury Department and its sanctions arm, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) when sanctions targeted more than 30 Iraqi individuals and entities accused of laundering billions of dollars through offshore fronts and illicit currency exchanges, alongside measures against more than a dozen companies and individuals in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates alleged to have channeled funds to Iran’s military through oil sales and cryptocurrency transactions.
