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Barack Obama sends troops back to Iraq as crisis worsens Barack Obama sends troops back to Iraq as crisis worsens
(35 minutes later)
The US is urgently deploying several hundred armed troops in and around Iraq and considering sending an additional contingent of special forces soldiers as Baghdad struggles to repel a rampant insurgency.The US is urgently deploying several hundred armed troops in and around Iraq and considering sending an additional contingent of special forces soldiers as Baghdad struggles to repel a rampant insurgency.
President Barack Obama Obama discussed the crisis with his top national security advisers on Monday night after earlier telling Congress that up to 275 troops could be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for US personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad. Barack Obama discussed the crisis with his top national security advisers on Monday night after earlier telling Congress that up to 275 troops could be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for personnel and the US Embassy in Baghdad.
About 170 of those forces have already arrived and another 100 soldiers will be on standby in a nearby country until they are needed, a US official said.
While Obama has vowed to keep US forces out of combat in Iraq, he said in his notification to Congress that the personnel moving into the region are equipped for direct fighting.While Obama has vowed to keep US forces out of combat in Iraq, he said in his notification to Congress that the personnel moving into the region are equipped for direct fighting.
Separately, three US officials said the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces soldiers to Iraq. Their limited mission which has not yet been approved would focus on training and advising beleaguered Iraqi troops, many of whom have fled their posts across the nation's north and west as the al-Qaida-inspired insurgency has advanced in the worst threat to the country since American troops left in 2011. Around 170 of those forces have already arrived and another 100 soldiers will be on standby in a nearby country such as Kuwait until they are needed. In addition, officials told Reuters that the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces to train and advise beleaguered Iraqi troops, many of whom have fled their posts in the face of the insurgency.
The moves come at the White House wrestles with an array of options for helping Iraq repel a Sunni Muslim insurgency that has captured large swaths of territory collaring Baghdad, the capital of the Shiite-led government. The moves come at the White House wrestles with an array of options for helping Iraq repel a Sunni Muslim insurgency that has captured large swaths of territory around Baghdad. US and Iranian officials held talks over the advance of Islamist insurgents in Iraq on Monday, the first time the two nations have collaborated over a common security interest in more than a decade.
In a rare move, US officials reached out to Iran on Monday to discuss ways the long-time foes might help stop the militants known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The discussions in Vienna took place on the sidelines of separate negotiations about Iran’s nuclear programme, amid conflicting signals in Washington over the extent of any coordination with Tehran over the crisis in Iraq.
The conversations took place on the sidelines of separate nuclear negotiations taking place in Vienna, Austria. US officials quickly played down speculation that the discussion might include military coordination or consultation, though secretary of state John Kerry said in an interview with Yahoo! News that the US would "not rule out anything that would be constructive." John Kerry, the US secretary of state, pointedly declined to rule out military cooperation in an interview on Monday, but US and Iranian officials later stressed that there was no prospect of military coordination, and none was discussed in Vienna, where talks were described as short and inconclusive.
Calling the threat to Iraq "existential", Kerry said that air strikes were also a possibility. “We are open to engaging the Iranians,” said a senior State Department official, who characterised the discussions as brief. “These engagements will not include military coordination or strategic determinations about Iraq’s future over the heads of the Iraqi people,” the US official said, on condition of anonymity.
"They're not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important," he said. "When you have people murdering, assassinating in these mass massacres, you have to stop that. And you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise." The Iranians confirmed that military cooperation was not on the cards. "The disastrous situation in Iraq was discussed today. No specific outcome was achieved," a senior Iranian official told Reuters.
Taken together, the developments suggest a willingness by Obama to send Americans into a collapsing security situation in order to quell the brutal fighting in Iraq before it morphs into outright war. Fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) have rapidly advanced through mostly Sunni areas of Iraq in recent days, capturing several cities. It was reported on Monday that they had taken Tal Afar, a northern Iraqi city. On Sunday, the insurgent fighters posted images purporting to show the execution of hundreds of Shia fighters.
The White House said the forces authorised for support and security will assist with the temporary relocation of some staff from the Baghdad embassy. The forces are entering Iraq with the consent of that country's government, the White House said. Obama said in his notification to Congress that the military personnel being sent to Iraq would provide support and security for the American embassy in Baghdad, but was "equipped for combat".
Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said the troops on standby could "provide airfield management, security, and logistics support, if required." They could work with embassy security teams or operate as a stand-alone force as directed. "This force will remain in Iraq until the security situation becomes such that it is no longer needed," he said.
Officials would not say where the soldiers would be on standby, but it is likely they would be in Kuwait, which was a major basing ground for US troops during the Iraq war. In Iraq on Monday, the capital, Baghdad, remained outside the grasp of Isis. But the mayor of Tal Afar, a city of 200,000 people located 260 miles north-west of Baghdad, told the Associated Press that the insurgent group was in control there. A resident said militants in pickup trucks with machine guns and jihadi banners were roaming the streets as gunfire rang out.
If the US were to deploy an additional team of special forces, the mission would almost certainly be small. One US official said it could be up to 100 special forces soldiers. It also could be authorised only as an advising and training mission meaning the soldiers would work closely with Iraqi forces that are fighting the insurgency but would not officially be considered as combat troops. Fighting in Tal Afar began on Sunday, with Iraqi government officials saying Isis fighters were firing rockets seized from military arms depots in the Mosul area. They said the local garrison suffered heavy casualties and the main hospital was unable to cope with the wounded.
The White House would not confirm that special operations forces were under consideration. But spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that while Obama would not send troops back into combat, "he has asked his national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraqi security forces". There were fears that militants would carry out further atrocities in Tal Afar, which is ethnically mixed and made up of Shias and Sunni Turkomen.
It is not clear how quickly the special forces could arrive in Iraq. It is also unknown whether they would remain in Baghdad or be sent to the nation's north, where the Sunni Muslim insurgency has captured large swaths of territory. Claims at the weekend that the insurgents had killed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers could not be verified. But pictures, on a militant website, appear to show masked Isis fighters loading captives on to flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie facedown in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives soaked in blood after being shot at several locations.
The troops would fall under the authority of the US ambassador in Baghdad and would not be authorised to engage in combat, another US official said. Their mission would be "non-operational training" of both regular and counter terrorism units, which the military has in the past interpreted to mean training on military bases, the official said. Iraq's chief military spokesman, Lt Gen Qassim al-Moussawi, said the photos were genuine and that he was aware of cases of mass murder of captured Iraqi soldiers in areas held by Isis.
However, all U.S. troops are allowed to defend themselves in Iraq if they are under attack. Tal Afar's capture came hours after Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, vowed to retake every inch of territory seized by the militants.
The three U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss the plans by name. "We will march and liberate every inch they defaced, from the country's northernmost point to the southernmost point," Maliki told volunteers joining up to fight the insurgents.
Obama made the end of the war in Iraq one of his signature campaign issues, and has touted the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011 as one of his top foreign policy successes. But he has been caught over the past week between Iraqi officials pleading for help as well as Republicans blaming him for the loss of a decade's worth of gains in Iraq and his anti-war Democratic political base, which is demanding that the US stay out of the fight. The Isis-led insurgency is the worst threat to Iraq since US troops left in 2011. But in an indication of how sensitive in Washington any cooperation with Tehran would be, officials moved quickly to clarify remarks by Kerry, who went further than his administration colleagues in entertaining military cooperation with Iran against a common adversary.
"We're open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform," Kerry told Yahoo News.
Pressed by interviewer Katie Couric over whether that would include military cooperation, Kerry replied: "At this moment I think we need to go step by step and see what in fact might be a reality. But I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability."
Less than three hours later, the Pentagon released a series of public statements that firmly ruled out military coordination. "There has been no contact, nor are there plans for contact, between [the Department of Defense] and the Iranian military on the security situation in Iraq," lieutenant commander Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, told the Guardian.
Notwithstanding the denials of military collaboration, the advent of joint diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran over the chaos in Iraq represents a dramatic turnaround for the two rival powers, whose relations, frozen for several decades, have only begun to thaw over the past year.
Military experts say any US air strikes in Iraq would will be impeded by the lack of intelligence from the the ground. An Iranian offensive, by contrast, would be expected to involve elite forces of ground troops that would engage in direct combat with Isis fighters, gaining a detailed knowledge of the battle lines.
Yet the notion of a partnership between the longtime foes prompted intense resistance in some quarters of Washington and Tehran on Monday. "It would be the height of folly to believe that the Iranian regime can be our partner in managing the deteriorating security situation in Iraq," senator John McCain said in a statement.
McCain's remarks contrasted with those of another Republican hawk, Lindsey Graham, who on Sunday expressed support for cooperating with Iran. McCain and Graham are usually in lockstep over foreign policy issues and their dispute revealed the divisions uncovered by the prospect of a collaboration with Iran.
Washington has dispatched some of its most senior White House and State Department officials to the nuclear talks in Austria, including the top deputy secretary of state, William Burns. He was scheduled to meet Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Monday.
Their meeting kicks off five days of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers collectively referred to as "P5+1". Before arriving in Vienna, Zarif spoke by telephone with the British foreign secretary, William Hague, about the possible role Iran could play in easing the conflict in Iraq.
Iran and the US previously collaborated over military intelligence in the post 9/11 fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan 13 years ago. But a US offical cautioned against reading too much into the latest talks. "No one should expect that all of a sudden, overnight, even if we resolve the nuclear agreement, that everything will change. It will not," the official said. "The fundamentals remain exactly as they are. Until we resolve the nuclear issue there cannot be any kind of fundamental change in this relationship."Additional reporting by Mark Tran