The United States and Iran are moving rapidly to defend Iraq from rampaging Sunni Islamist insurgents, with Washington urgently considering air strikes on the jihadi militants and Tehran dispatching its foremost powerbroker to help arrange the defence of Baghdad.
Senior US officials told the Guardian that an air campaign was under serious discussion, possibly targeting fighters not just in Iraq but in Syria, where they have seized swaths of territory in the past two years. President Barack Obama said that decisions would be taken in the "days ahead".
Iran, meanwhile, moved to defend its own interests in its western neighbour, sending Major General Qassem Suleimani, an éminence grise of the Iranian revolutionary guards, to Baghdad to meet militia leaders and tribal chiefs in control of the Iraqi capital's vulnerable western approaches.
The scramble by two staunch adversaries to shore up the embattled Iraqi authorities underscored how seriously they take the situation in a country in danger of fragmentation as a result of this week's sudden advance by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). » | Martin Chulov in Baghdad, Spencer Ackerman in New York and Paul Lewis in Washington | Friday, June 13, 2014
