First evidence of Islamic Republic forces fighting alongside the RAF to take control of towns from Isil in northern Iraq
By
Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
8:02PM GMT 02 Dec 2014
British, American and other allied forces are now fighting directly alongside
their former rivals Iran, according to new footage of the war in Iraq.
An Iranian jet has been filmed for the first time bombing positions of the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), during a battle for the town of
Saadiya, north-east of Baghdad.
United State Air Force jets have been flying missions over Iraq since August,
and the RAF since September. Pentagon officials later confirmed that Iranian
jets had taken part in bombing raids.
Iranian advisers are known to have been embedded with the Iraqi army and
militia forces fighting Isil. But this is the first proof that the Islamic
Republic and the countries it famously termed the “Great and Little Satan” -
America and Britain - are taking part in missions on the same side.
The footage was filmed on Sunday by an Al-Jazeera crew reporting on the key
battle for Saadiya and Jalula, two towns north-east of Baghdad not far from
the Iranian border.
Saadiya was captured in the great surge Isil staged across much of Iraq in
June and became a major jihadist base, while Jalula, a mostly Kurdish town
with some Sunni Arab presence, has exchanged hands on a number of occasions.
Al-Jazeera claimed the jet belonged to the Iraqi air force, which was given
half a dozen Russian-built Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets by Iran at the
outset of the war in June.
However, analysts from IHS Jane’s Defence identified the jet as a McDonnell
Douglas F-4 Phantom II, a relic of America’s pre-1979 alliance with the
Shah’s Iran. The Phantom was a staple of the US Air Force in the Vietnam
war.
The only other country still using Phantoms in the Middle East, Jane’s said,
was Turkey, which has pledged not to take a direct part in the fight against
Isil.
“This footage is the first visual evidence of direct IRIAF (Islamic Republic
of Iran Air Force) involvement in the conflict,” Jane’s noted.
After Jane’s claims were drawn to their attention, Pentagon and British
defence sources both confirmed that US and RAF personnel operating in Iraq
were already aware of the Iranian air force’s presence.
"We have indications that they did indeed fly air strikes with F-4
Phantoms in the past several days," said Rear Admiral John Kirby,
Pentagon spokesman.
Iran is not part of the formal coalition drawn up to take on Isil in Iraq and
Syria, in which France and several Gulf nations are flying sorties as well
as Britain and the US.
But earlier in the autumn, American jets bombed positions in the town of
Amerli north of Baghdad shortly before it was retaken from Isil by Iraqi
ground troops assisted by Iranian-backed Shia militia.
As if to emphasise the point that the US was effectively providing air cover
for an old enemy - many of those Shia militia fought against the American
and British presence in Iraq after the 2003 invasion - Qasim Suleimani, head
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds force, made a highly publicised
victory tour of Amerli.
Mr Suleimani oversees all Iranian military assistance to Shia militias abroad,
and is regarded as a powerful eminence grise of the regime.
Until his presence in Amerli, though, he rarely allowed himself to be
photographed.
Despite the lack of formal collaboration, the Iranians, British and Americans
seem to have an informal arrangement over zones of influence. According to
regular Ministry of Defence and Pentagon releases, most coalition air
attacks in Iraq are either in the north, in support of Kurdish forces
fighting on a front line on the southern edge of the Kurdish autonomous
region, or in western Iraq.
The Saadiya operation was near the Iranian border to the east.
“It is unlikely that Iran would become a fully fledged member of the
coalition,” one defence source said. “But we hope that they would align
themselves with the direction that the coalition are taking.” A Pentagon
official was quoted by the Huffington Post website as saying that because
the US was operating in Iraq with the permission of the Baghdad government,
it could not put pressure on the Iraqis over the Iranian involvement.
“We’re there at the invitation of the Iraqi government, so it’s not for us to
say what they should allow, what they shouldn’t allow,” the official said.
Nevertheless, the presence of Iranian, British and American forces fighting
alongside each other is a sign of shifting alliances in the Middle East and
warming ties, particularly
as talks over the Iranian nuclear programme continue.
This closeness is causing unease in majority Sunni countries, particularly in
the Gulf, which regards Iran as a major destabilising influence in the
region - as do, officially, Britain and the US.
Until recently, both countries were insisting that the use of military force
against Iran over its nuclear programme remained “on the table”.
Iran’s rivals, like Saudi Arabia, insist that there will be no solution to the
Isil crisis until President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is removed.
Prince Turki bin Faisal, the influential former Saudi ambassador to both
Britain and America, said yesterday that Iran should be forced to withdraw
its support for Mr Assad.
Without Iranian support, Mr Assad would be gone in a few weeks, he said at a
conference in London organised by the European Council on Foreign Relations
on Tuesday.
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