Wednesday, December 3, 2014

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Iranian Fighter Jets Strike ISIS in Iraq - New York Times





TEHRAN — Iranian fighter jets conducted bombing raids against Sunni extremists in Iraq last week, hitting targets near a 25-mile buffer zone that Iran has declared along its border, an Iranian politician, American officials and independent analysts have confirmed.


The bombing raids, along with Iran’s support for Shiite and Kurdish militia forces on the ground, illustrate the increasingly open role Iran is playing in Iraq, officials say. But they do not mean Iran is interested in cooperating directly with the United States, they say, even though they are fighting the same enemy and have some of the same allies.


The attacks on positions held by the militant Islamic State forces took place around the end of November in Diyala Province, where the battle front is closest to Iranian territory, according to the Iranian politician, Hamid Reza Taraghi.


He also confirmed the existence of the buffer zone, whose existence he said was accepted by the Iraqi authorities some months ago.



“We do not tolerate any threats within the buffer zone, and these targets were in the vicinity of the buffer zone,” said Mr. Taraghi, who is usually well-informed on security issues. He claimed that dozens of Islamic State fighters, whom he called terrorists, had been killed in the strikes.



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A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.




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Mr. Taraghi said at least four F-4 jets had taken part in the airstrikes over a period of nine hours, flying eight sorties in and around the cities of Jolah and Saeediyeh, which are just beyond the buffer zone.


“The operation was conducted in cooperation with Iraqi forces,” he said. Referring to Iran’s point man in Iraq, Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Mr. Taraghi added, “Normally General Suleimani would be in charge, but I have no particular information whether he was present or not.”


The general was formerly the commander of Iran’s paramilitary Quds force, and was a figure of some mystery. Now, though, he is regularly photographed on battlefields in Iraq, wearing a cap turned backward or surrounded by fighters from across the region, flashing guns and victory signs.


President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and commanders of the Revolutionary Guards have said that they consider Baghdad and the Shiite shrine cities Kerbala and Najaf to be “red lines,” hinting that Iran would openly intervene in the fighting if the Islamic State made gains in those areas.


American military and intelligence officials confirmed that Iranian F-4 jets struck Islamic State targets last week in eastern Diyala Province, and said the bombing raids were the first the Iranians were known to have conducted against the militant group, also known as ISIS and ISIL.


“We are aware that Iranian F-4’s flew several missions last week in support of government of Iraq operations in the vicinity of Jalula,” said a senior American military official, who added that the Iraqi government informed Washington about the strike after it happened.


The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, indirectly confirmed reports about the strikes on Tuesday. “I have no reason to believe that they’re not true,” he told reporters.


The satellite news network Al Jazeera has broadcast footage in recent days that appeared to show an F-4 flying over eastern Iraq, according to IHS Jane’s Defense weekly, a British defense analysis company, and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The only nations in the region who now operate the American-built jets are Turkey and Iran, which obtained them from the United States before the 1979 revolution.


Several American officials said the coalition led by the United States, which flies dozens of missions daily in Iraq, does not directly coordinate with the Iranian government. Instead, they said, the Iraqi military acts as a middleman, to prevent conflicts in the air.


“We are flying missions over Iraq,” Admiral Kirby said. “We coordinate with the Iraqi government as we conduct those. It’s the Iraqi air space, and Iraqi’s to deconflict. We are not coordinating with nor are we deconflicting with Iranian military.”


However, the United States operates Awacs command-and-control planes that track the movement of aircraft over Iraq, and American military officials at command centers in Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq almost certainly watched the Iranian airstrikes unfold.


“We maintain good situational awareness of the activity taking place in the airspace, over both Iraq and Syria, in order to ensure reasonably safe and effective operations by our forces,” said Col. Edward T. Sholtis, a spokesman for the Central Command’s air forces headquarters in Qatar.


Iran’s air force poses little threat to coalition aircraft. The Iranian air force and its outdated F-4s are “a third-rate air force irrelevant beyond their borders,” a senior American officer said, adding that “in the end, it’s more hype than impact.”


Another American officer welcomed the Iranian strikes in Diyala because it meant that there were fewer airstrikes the coalition would need to mount. But Admiral Kirby echoed the sentiment of other American officials who were concerned that increased Iranian military involvement could incite radical Sunnis elsewhere and become a valuable propaganda and recruiting tool for the militants.


“Our message to Iran is the same today as it was when it started,” Admiral Kirby said on Tuesday. “We want nothing to be done that further inflames sectarian tensions in the country.”



Thomas Erdbrink reported from Tehran, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.










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