Iraq May Turn to Iran for Help, Maliki Aide Says
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Version 0 of 1. BAGHDAD — A senior Iraqi official on Friday warned that his country might be forced to turn to Iran for military help if none were forthcoming from the United States, but he insisted he was unaware of any Iranian military units in his country so far. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to make statements to the media, was severely critical of the Obama administration for its handling of the Iraq crisis, and for failing, in his view, to better prepare the country’s military for an emergency. “If you’re in an antique shop there’s a sign, ‘If you broke it, you bought it,' ” the official, who is an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, said. “I am not saying the Americans are responsible for everything, but they did not leave a well-trained army and they left us without any real air support, and the Obama administration really shares much of the blame.” American military and intelligence officials have painted a sharply different picture, saying the Iraqi military collapse reflected poor leadership, declining troop morale and broken equipment, subverting a $25 billion effort by the United States to train and equip Iraq’s security forces. CNN reported on Friday, quoting an unidentified Iraqi security source in Baghdad, that 500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in three units deployed into Iraq in recent days, but there was no independent confirmation of that. The Maliki adviser said that the Iraqi government wanted air support and intelligence sharing in particular from the United States. So far, the adviser said, he was not aware of any direct Iranian role in Iraq, nor the presence of any Iranian units on Iraqi territory. “What changes this is if the U.S. does not help, Iran will come in and this is really dangerous,” he said. “If they don’t help I don’t think Iran will let the Iraqi government collapse, they will fight and fight very hard.” The adviser said that the Iraqi government was not to blame alone for the success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s advance through the north of the country. He blamed Turkey, because it was angry over Iraqi support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and the Kurds, who wanted to profit from Iraqi weakness in the north, which on Thursday helped them to take Kirkuk, an oil rich prize long shared between the Arabs and the Kurds in an uneasy truce. “So yes there are cases where the Iraqi army disappeared but you have to take the locality in context,” the advisersaid. “The 2nd Division of the Iraqi Army is 80 percent Kurds and 20 percent locals, the Kurds withdrew to the Kurdish areas and this started a panic.” “Turkey wanted to unseat Bashar al Assad and now they see the Iraqis helping him and this is payback,” the senior official said. “This is part of that, I really believe that.” But he said that the Iraqi government, while concerned about developments, was not concerned about its survival, nor about the safety of the capital. While the Sunni militants have headed south after capturing Mosul, Tikrit and some other places, he said, “I don’t think they have the capability to come the rest of the way.” While Mr. Maliki failed to win support in his parliament for the declaration of a state of emergency, because Sunni and Kurdish lawmakers boycotted the session and prevented the required quorum, the official said that was not a vital concern in the security situation. “The prime minister has total control of the security forces. The most important thing now is that the army has to stand up and fight and prove itself.” Just how serious some of the setbacks were for the Iraqi military was underscored by a video that surfaced on Thursday of 600 prisoners being marched single file outside of Tikrit, under guard of what appeared to be black-clad militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS. The video was attributed to the jihadi group, although its authenticity could not be verified. The captives were described as Shiite soldiers. Such news was partly counterbalanced by reports that two towns taken over by the militants on Thursday, Sadiyah and Jalawlaa, as well as parts of Muqdadiyah, were retaken by the Iraqi Army working with Kurdish militiamen, the pesh merga, on Friday. Muqdadiyah, 55 miles north of Baghdad, represented the closest the militant advance had come to Baghdad. The ISIS advance appeared to have stopped at least for a day outside Samarra, a town important to Shiites for the religious shrine there. An attack on that shrine in 2006 set off widespread sectarian warfare. At the Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, the country’s largest air force base, hundreds of American contractors were in the process of being evacuated Friday, in an operation that began Thursday, according to Iraqi news reports. The contractors were training Iraqi crews to maintain and operate F-16 fighter jets and helicopters. Lockheed confirmed that 25 American trainers had been evacuated from the base, which is close to the areas north of Baghdad where the ISIS militants have advanced. |