IRAN’S role in an Iraqi military offensive to recapture Tikrit could be positive as long as it does not fuel sectarian divisions in the country, the US military’s top officer said Tuesday.
chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators that Iran’s military assistance for Shiite militias was nothing new but was carried out in a more open manner this week as Iraqi forces pushed to retake Tikrit from Islamic State jihadists.
‘This is the most overt conduct of Iranian support,’ Dempsey said, which came ‘in the form of artillery’ and other aid.
‘Frankly, it would only be a problem if it resulted in sectarianism,’ he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
US commanders rarely discuss Iran’s activities in Iraq in public, stressing that Washington does not coordinate with Tehran’s military in any way – even though the two foes see the IS group as a common enemy.
US officials have pressed the Shiite-led government in Baghdad to reach out to the country’s alienated Sunni community and worry that Shiite militia could persecute the Sunni community as they push to roll back the IS group.
In an assault launched on Monday, officials in Baghdad say a 30,000-strong force has been mobilised to take back Tikrit.
Dempsey said Shiite militias – which are armed by Tehran – account for about two-thirds of the force while Iraqi government army troops make up the remainder.
If the Iraqi army and Shiite fighters ‘perform in a credible way’ and defeat the jihadists in Tikrit, ‘then it will, in the main, have been a positive thing in terms of the counter-ISIL campaign,’ Dempsey said, using an alternative acronym for the IS extremists.
General Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s powerful Quds force, is reportedly on the ground with Shiite fighters coordinating the operation on Tikrit.
Dempsey said he had seen a recent photo of the commander in social media and that US intelligence agencies ‘will now go to work to decide if he was personally there or not’.
At the same hearing, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter acknowledged Iraq did not ask for military support from Washington for the Tikrit operation, the largest assault so far by Baghdad against the IS.
Carter said he shared Dempsey’s concerns about sectarian divisions erupting and that Washington was closely monitoring the conduct of the campaign. I hope sectarianism does not show its ugly head,’ Carter said.
But after the hearing, two Republican hawks on the committee, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, demanded President Barack Obama’s administration ‘wake up’ to the threat posed by Iran’s influence in Iraq, saying Tehran’s backing of Shiite militias could derail the war effort against the IS.
‘The Iranian-backed offensive in Tikrit, and its growing role in Iraq more broadly, is not only threatening our mission against ISIL.
‘It is being led by the same Shia militias that killed American soldiers in Iraq and directed by the same Iranian leaders that gave them the weapons and training to do it,’ said a joint statement from the two senators.
• Iran denounced as ‘lie-spreading’ a speech on Tuesday in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the US Congress a nuclear deal being negotiated with Tehran would threaten the world.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, in a statement, denounced as ‘very repetitious and boring Netanyahu’s continuous lie-spreading about the goals and intentions behind Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme’.
In a ranting address to Congress, Netanyahu warned Iran was bent on subjugating and terrorising the Middle East, and that it was a threat to the entire world through its nuclear programme.
‘Iran’s founding document promises the pursuit of jihad, and states are collapsing across the Middle East,’ Netanyahu said in the speech to a joint meeting of the Congress.
The Iranian spokeswoman said the speech was a ‘sign of weakness’ and that it revealed the isolation of ‘radical groups’ in the Jewish state.
The anti-Iranian policy ‘is facing serious problems because of the continuous talks and Iran’s serious determination to overcome this fabricated crisis’, she was quoted as saying.
• The US and Iran wrapped up three days of intense nuclear negotiations on Wednesday, but American officials said ‘tough challenges’ remained as a March 31 deadline for a framework deal looms.
Ignoring a passionate plea from Israel’s leader to ditch their talks, top US diplomat John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pressed on at the negotiating table in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux.
But a senior US State Department official conceded the ‘bottom line here is that there is no deal to announce to anybody today’.
There had been ‘very intense hard work, some progress, but tough challenges yet to be resolved,’ the official said.
In his dramatic speech to the US Congress on Tuesday, Binyamin Netanyahu called on the US administration to halt the talks which he warned ‘doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb. It paves Iran’s path to the bomb.’
He insisted the deal would leave Iran’s nuclear capability largely intact and would turn the Middle East into a ‘nuclear tinderbox’.
Israel itself is understood to have nuclear weapons but has never officially admitted to having such an arsenal.
The US knows that if there is a deal the ‘entire world will pore over every line, every word’, the senior US official told reporters.
Everyone from US President Barack Obama, to Kerry and the hundreds of people working on the deal was acutely aware of their responsibility to the world, the official said.
‘The president believes profoundly that if we can reach an agreement, that will make the world a safer place,’ the official said.
Kerry will now fly to Riyadh to brief US Gulf allies on the emerging deal and plans to meet in Paris on Saturday with his British, French and German counterparts.
Talks at political director level between the so-called P5+1 countries – the five members of the UN Security Council and Germany – and Iran continued in Montreux on Thursday.
Despite the political drama around Netanyahu’s speech, US officials have shrugged off the address, saying it was nothing new.
‘On the core issue, which is how to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon which would make it far more dangerous, the prime minister did not offer any viable alternatives,’ Obama said.
The Iranian foreign ministry denounced what it called Netanyahu’s ‘continuous lie-spreading about the goals and intentions behind Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme.’
The growing rapprochement between the United States and its old foe Iran after more than three decades of enmity has however raised alarm not just in Israel, but also among US allies in the Gulf who remain wary of Iran’s bid to spread its influence in the Middle East.
In a rare admission on Tuesday, the US military’s top officer General Martin Dempsey said Iran’s help in an Iraqi military offensive to recapture the town of Tikrit could be ‘a positive thing’ providing it did not fuel added sectarianism.
US officials said that there would now be a ‘robust schedule’ of meetings as the March 31 deadline looms.
The next bilateral talks between Iran and the United States will be held on March 15, most likely in Geneva, although the venue has not been confirmed.
‘Until you have all the pieces put in place, it’s the old Rubik’s Cube,’ the State Department official said. ‘Until that last piece locks in place nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.’
US officials insist that even if there is a nuclear deal with Iran, that does not mean they will turn a blind eye to the other activities of the country, still branded by Washington as the number one state sponsor of terrorism.
‘Regardless of what happens with the nuclear file, we will continue to confront aggressively Iranian expansion in the region, Iranian aggressiveness in the region,’ another State Department official said.
• Israel should investigate the killing of more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children, during the war on the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, and should make the findings public, according to a report submitted on Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The report was issued by Makarim Wibisono who has recently become UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territory. It was his first report since he replaced Richard Falk.
In his report, Wibisono, a former Indonesian ambassador, said that 2,256 Palestinians were killed during the military confrontation in the Gaza Strip in July and August 2014 of whom 1,563 were civilians including 538 children. Israel, he added, says its army launched a military offensive in response to rockets fired from the Hamas-run coastal enclave at Israeli towns bordering the area. Sixty-six Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed.
‘The stark disparity in casualty figures on the two sides … reflects the (skewed) balance of power and the disproportionate cost borne by Palestinian civilians, raising questions as to whether Israel adhered to the international law principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions,’ Wibisono said.
The report added that most victims ‘were families killed in missile strikes on their own homes, usually at night,’ and not just ‘bystanders on the street in the wrong place at the wrong time’.
The findings were based on interviews Wibisono did with witnesses and victims in Amman and Cairo as well as video calls with victims in the Gaza Strip. He couldn’t make face-to-face interviews in Gaza because Israel denied him entry.
