Hagel: US knows Iran, Russia Roles in Iraq


 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah

Jul 12, 2014

 Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel  said Friday that the U.S. is aware of Russian and Iranian were helping Iraq battle against militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but U.S. was not coordinating its own assistance with either country.

Hagel was asked at a Pentagon news conference about reports that Iranian and Russian are providing fighter aircraft to help Iraq combat Islamic extremists.

Hagel replied "We are aware of the Iranian and Russian efforts to help the Iraqis, but we are not involved in coordinating any missions,"

In recent weeks, Iraq has received aircraft from both Iran and Russia, with questions abound over who is flying the aircraft. the official said, adding that there is no evidence Iranian pilots are flying.

The official said Washington is much more concerned about Iran's role than Russia's because Tehran is provided more diverse and more sophisticated military aid to Iraq, including surveillance drones and military advisers.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISISL) , the Sunni extremist group that has seized large swaths of Iraq's north and west in recent weeks and seeks to create an Islamic territory across both sides of the Syria-Iraq border.

ISIS militants last week captured and temporarily held an Iraqi post on the Jordan border, a crossing that is roughly 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Saudi territory.

Last week, the group declared the establishment of a caliphate ruled by Shariah law in the land it controls in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The U.S. is conducting dozens of manned and unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq daily to assist in the fight, but the defense official said any coordination is being managed by the Iraqis.

There are also approximately 750 U.S. troops operating in Baghdad and Erbil in the north.

"We are just finishing up with our assessment teams there, and they'll be providing some recommendations and guidance based on those assessments," Hagel said.

The White House said it continues to be the view of the United States that Iraq's political leaders should come together and unify that country in the face of the threat that is posed by ISIS.

Sources

AP

economictimes.

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