Fears for safety of NZ troops amid rising Iran-US hostility

New Zealand Defence Force troops based in Iraq are at risk of being caught up in Iran's retaliation over the US killing of top general Qasem Soleimani, a senior Waikato University academic says.

Today Iran has announced it will roll back its commitments to the 2015 nuclear accord amid heightened tensions over the assassination of Soleimani at Baghdad Airport last Friday. The killing was ordered by US President Donald Trump.

As well, Iraqi MPs have voted in favour of all foreign military leaving their country.

New Zealand has up to 45 military personnel in a non-combat training role at Taji Military Complex in Iraq, and had already planned to withdraw all troops by June this year.

The duty Minister, Chris Hipkins, is currently being briefed by the New Zealand Defence Force.

The government released a statement over the weekend in response to the attack - but made no mention of the New Zealand troops who are on the ground. In the statement, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters acknowledged the US' concerns about Iran but also called for de-escalation in the region.

Alexander Gillespie, who is a professor of International Relations at Waikato University, told Summer Times the government may decide to accelerate the Defence Force's exit from Iraq.

"I'm concerned about their safety. I think this could turn quickly. It will depend on what Iran does next and they have a menu of options of what they can do.

"They're going to try and avoid a direct conflict [with the US] because they won't win a direct conflict but indirect conflict they've got a much better chance and one of the vulnerable points is Iraq because there's a lot of Shia militia there and the country doesn't have a strong central authority.

"It's also got woeful economic conditions... so it's ripe for turmoil so if they decide to pressure and focus on the coalition troops, including the New Zealand coalition troops, they could find themselves at the short end of the conflict."

He said New Zealand troops went to Iraq as part of a US-led coalition, not as part of a United Nations presence. If Iran chose to make trouble it could even try and cause a civil war in Iraq and the coalition troops could become a target.

"The worst-case scenario you'd want to happen now is that the Irainian Shia militia in Iraq decide to start attacking those troops because if that happened we would not want to be part of that war.

"It was right to be there to defeat islamic State; it's not right to be there if Iraq fragments in a regional war with Iran."

Gillespie said the US has been acting on its own right now, because it knows traditional core allies like France, Germany and likely New Zealand would not have been in favour of the killing of Soleimani.

International law was divided over such extra-judicial killings, but on a practical level it meant nations lost the ability to keep talking to each other.