President Barack Obama is under growing pressure to set aside years of hostility and start co-operating with Iran to counter the jihadist threat engulfing Iraq and its capital, Baghdad.
Ten years after his predecessor, President George W Bush, declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, the Obama administration was openly admitting it might have to recommit to the use of military force to reunite the country and check the long-term menace of the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.
Britain too was offering counter-terrorism expertise that would mean it working alongside not just Iraqi troops but Shia militias and even Iranian special forces, only recently considered among the greatest threats to British interests in the region.
Iran has already sent units of its Revolutionary Guard to Iraq to help defend Baghdad from the onslaught being waged by ISIS, a Sunni jihadist al-Qaeda offshoot, according to reports emerging from Baghdad and Tehran.
State media quoted President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, as telling the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will apply all its efforts on the international and regional levels to confront terrorism.” » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent, and Robert Tait in Jerusalem | Friday, June 13, 2014
