Iran President Hassan Rouhani says may work with US in Iraq



 Written : Mohamed Abdel fattah

Jun 14, 2014

 President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday acknowledged the possibility of US assisting Iran and for a potential alliance between Iran and the US in combating Sunni militants in Iraq

“We can think about it if we see America starts confronting the terrorist groups in Iraq or elsewhere.” Rouhani said on Saturday.

Shi'ite Muslim Iran has been alarmed by the seizure this week of several major northern Iraqi towns by Sunni Islamist insurgent forces

Rouhani has said that the country is ready to assist Iraq in its battle against extremist Sunni Islamists.“If the Iraqi government asks us for help, we may provide any assistance the Iraqi nation would like us to provide in the fight against terrorism." Rouhani said in a speech made at a news conference to mark a year since Rouhani’s victory in the 2013 presidential election

The largely Shia Iranian government has close links to the Shia Iraqi ,both are seen as infidels by the Sunni group Isis ,whose stated aim is the establishment of a caliphate governed under a strict interpretation of Sharia law .

Iran has sent about 500 Revolutionary Guard troops to fight alongside Iraqi government security forces in Diyala province, a senior security official in Baghdad told CNN.

Meanwhile ,President Barack Obama said Friday he is weighing a range of options for countering the violent Islamic insurgency in Iraq, but he said the United States "will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq," but other options are being considered.

Tehran is open to the possibility of working with the United States to support Baghdad, the senior official said.

Relations between Iran and Washington have improved modestly since the 2013 election of President Hassan Rouhani, who promised "constructive engagement" with the world.

Sources

Reuters

france24

independent

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

French fighter jets launch first air strikes on IS in Iraq

Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Sep19, 2014 France carried out its first airstrikes in Iraq on Friday, hitting a logistics depot held by the Islamic State extremist group, French President Francois Hollande announced. A statement from Hollande's office read: "This morning, at 9.40am, our Rafale aircraft carried out a first attack against a logistics center of the terrorist organization Daesh [Isis] in the north-east of Iraq. The target was hit and entirely destroyed. Other operations will be carried out in the days to come." The target was near Tall Mouss in the Zoumar sector of northern Iraq. The French aircraft are based at Al-Dhafra, near Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The strikes came after a night of violence in the Iraqi capital. The Islamic State again demonstrated its capability to target mostly Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Suicide bombers and mortar fire struck the Shiite district of Kadhimiyah overnight, officials said. Later, at least 17 people w...
Read more

Iraqi Prime Minister orders Air Force to back Kurds fighting Islamists

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah Aug 04, 2014  Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called upon his country's armed forces to help Kurdish forces battle a Sunni militant offensive in northern Iraq. Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga struggling against an advance by Sunni militants in the country's northwest, as fighting raged after militants seized several towns,sending thousands of people fleeing to the nearby mountains and threatening the country’s largest dam. Maliki, who remains in office after an inconclusive election in April, has been accused of stoking tensions with the Sunnis by pursuing a sectarian agenda. He has commanded the air force to provide aerial support to the Kurds in the first such pledge of air power to the semi-autonomous government in the Kurdish region of Iraq since Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, was captured by the militants on June 10. Army spokesman Qassem Atta said in a statement carried by state television that the air force an...
Read more

Syrian refugees reach 3 million, UN says

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah 29 August 2014 The civil war in Syria has forced a record 3 million people out of the country as more than a million people fled in the past year, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday. In a statement Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said one million of those refugees fled in the past year alone from the "increasingly horrifying conditions" in Syria. The statement said the figure does not include hundreds of thousands who have not registered as refugees. It also said a further 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. The majority of refugees have fled to countries neighbouring Syria, with most now seeking shelter in Lebanon. Opposition groups in Syria have been fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad since his government violently suppressed protests against his rule in March 2011. The situation has been worsened in recent months by the formation and advance of the Islamic State group, which now controls large swathes of Syria and ...
Read more