The US is an unreliable friend and Iraq should not allow a single US soldier on its soil, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a visit he had with Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid on Saturday.

Iran, which maintains strong ties with Iraq, opposes the US military presence on its border in Iraq as well as in the Gulf, saying Western military interventions are at the root of insecurity in the region.

“The Americans are not friends of Iraq. The Americans are not friends with anyone and they are not loyal to their European friends either,” Khamenei was quoted as saying by state media.

US security agencies are trying to manage the fallout from the leak of dozens of classified documents, implications for both the operation of government agencies and Washington’s relations with other countries, while searching for the motive behind the leak of sensitive information. Documents have appeared since March on social media sites with information about Ukraine’s military weaknesses or information about US allies such as Israel, South Korea and Turkey, without the material making much of a splash until a related article was published in the New York Times. York Times earlier this month.

“The presence of even one American in Iraq is too much,” Khamenei stressed to Rashid, who was in Tehran with a delegation to strengthen ties between the two neighbors.

About 2,500 US troops are stationed in Iraq to advise and assist the Iraqi military in the war against Islamic State, which in 2014 had seized territory in the country.

“Iraq’s main effort is to deepen relations with Iran and to resolve some remaining issues between the two countries,” Rashid said for his part, without referring to Baghdad-Washington relations.