Iranian military forces are fighting ISIS in Iraq. Gen. Soleimani is in Baghdad. Obama may send Iraq arms
Iranian military forces are fighting ISIS in Iraq. Gen. Soleimani is in Baghdad. Obama may send Iraq arms, DEBKAfile, June 13, 2014
[S]teps by Washington and Tehran pave the way for the US and Iran to cooperate for the first time in a joint military endeavor.
[M]oves by Tehran will determined how Washington acts in the coming hours.
[President Obama said] that he was thinking of “short-term military things.”
Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani
President Barack Obama is close to a decision on a number of US military steps for thwarting the march of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, now halted at Samarra 70 km short of Baghdad. In a comment Thursday night, June 12, he said: “We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter.” He added that he was thinking of “short-term military things.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been appealing to the White House for months for Apache helicopters and Hellfire air-ground rockets to fight terrorists. These Obama may now release, as well as considering token US drone attacks on ISIS targets in Iraq, for which he is most reluctant..
Thursday afternoon, Iran’s most powerful gun, the Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, arrived in Baghdad to take over the push against ISIS, in the same way as he has managed Bashar Assad’s war in Syria, and pull together the demoralized and scattered Iraqi army.
Those steps by Washington and Tehran pave the way for the US and Iran to cooperate for the first time in a joint military endeavor.
Since ISIS forces, albeit boosted by tens of thousands of armed Sunnis flocking to the black flag, are not capable of capturing Baghdad and have halted outside the city, President Obama and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have won a small space for deciding how to proceed.
Khamenei must determine whether Gen. Soleimani with the help of American weaponry can stop al Qaeda, save Maliki from collapse and prevent the fall of Baghdad, and whether it is worth sending an Iranian army division over to Iraq, our intelligence sources reported earlier Thursday. They have since entered Iraq and are fighting ISIS forces.
These moves by Tehran will determined how Washington acts in the coming hours.
The big winner of the ISIS onslaught on Iraq, apart from Al Qaeda, is the semiautonomous Kurdish republic in the north. When the Iraqi army’s 12th division assigned with defending Kirkuk and its oil fields scattered to the four winds Thursday, the Kurdish Peshmerga army rolled right in and snatched the city and oil fields from the control of the Baghdad government, fulfilling an old Kurdish dream.
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WarSclerotic 
June 13, 2014 at 12:06 AM
Why wouldn’t Obama just up-arm the Iranians? It would make sense given his actions in every other episode. It’s really their part of the world anyway… and what better way to show respect?
June 13, 2014 at 4:06 AM
Help Iran?? Respectfully, hell no. ISIS is going to kick Iran’s ass in Iraq. They failed to stop them in Syria and they will fail in Iraq. That way, they’ll get the respect they deserve at the hands of other muslims in their part of the world. Besides, let’s see what they’re really made of.
June 13, 2014 at 4:11 AM
Well we gave Iran a Stealth Drone… the least we could do is give them some Stealth Choppers and may be a nuclear fuse or two. We could probably improve their targeting capability while we’re at it. May be we could put BATFE in charge of the operation and send everything through Texas and Arizona since they’re Red States…
June 13, 2014 at 2:40 PM
Then ISIS could save themselves a lot of time and just invade the US by simply walking across the southern border with Mexico. Just be sure to bring some children for cover.
July 28, 2014 at 9:10 AM
Iran has never been our enemy. It’s hyped up nonsense from Netanyahu. Iran and the US, face a common enemy, even Al Qaeda can’t stand them, in fact Al Qaeda should be freaking mad how these low life scum are carrying their black flag about.
The entire culture of Iraq is being destroyed, due to a bunch of sick twisted scum , who believe every marked grave is an abomination, and any cultural preservation is “idol worship”
Iran and the US could wipe these bastards clean off the earth, and stop their march into every country on the planet. And any Sunni who joins ISIS, is a moron, because they don’t represent anything Islamic. They themselves are an abomination.