“If the Taliban attacks us, we will respond with all available means,” the US president said, announcing the official withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
The US President officially announced on Wednesday night, Tehran time, that US troops would withdraw from Afghanistan.
“US President Joe Biden said: “We cannot continue the cycle of expanding the US presence in Afghanistan. The withdrawal will begin on May 1 (Saturday, May 11) in coordination with NATO.”
In another part of his speech, he said: “If the Taliban attacks us, we will respond with all available means.”
Noting that he is the fourth US president to be in charge of US troops in Afghanistan, Biden said he would not hand over responsibility to the fifth president. He said: “Our first goal is to make sure that Afghanistan will not be used as a base to attack the United States, and we have achieved that goal.”
The US president added that the United States should focus on terrorist threats that have emerged from elsewhere, as well as China.
Earlier, a senior US official announced that the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan would begin in May, with the goal of withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan by September 11 (the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan).
Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani spoke by telephone with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Tuesday.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has warned of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. In an interview, Graham said that the US president is “moving towards another 9/11” as US troops withdraw from Afghanistan.
Graham claimed: “[The military] said we could make sure that ISIL and al-Qaeda would never return to harm us by holding 3,000 US troops, but she (Biden) rejected that recommendation.”