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Iran emerges from shadows to join fight against Islamic State

BAGHDAD — Iranian fighter jets struck extremist targets in Iraq recently, Iranian and United States officials have confirmed, in the latest display of Tehran’s new willingness to conduct military operations openly on foreign battlefields rather than covertly and through proxies.

People and the police gathering at the damaged residence of the Iranian Ambassador to Yemen after a car bomb attack in Sanaa, on Wednesday. For months, Iran has flashed its military prowess around the region, such as supporting the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen who have taken over the capital. Photo: AP

People and the police gathering at the damaged residence of the Iranian Ambassador to Yemen after a car bomb attack in Sanaa, on Wednesday. For months, Iran has flashed its military prowess around the region, such as supporting the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen who have taken over the capital. Photo: AP

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BAGHDAD — Iranian fighter jets struck extremist targets in Iraq recently, Iranian and United States officials have confirmed, in the latest display of Tehran’s new willingness to conduct military operations openly on foreign battlefields rather than covertly and through proxies.

The shift stems in part from Iran’s deepening military role in Iraq in the war against the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State. But it also reflects a profound change in Iran’s strategy, stepping from the shadows into a more overt use of hard power as it promotes Shia influence around the region.

Iranian and Pentagon officials acknowledged that Tehran had stepped up its military operations in Iraq late last month, using 1970s-era fighter jets to bomb targets in a buffer zone that extends more than 50km into Iraq.

The new military approach highlights an unusual confluence of interests in both Iraq and Syria, where Tehran and Washington find themselves fighting the same enemy in an increasingly public fashion. While there is no direct coordination between Iran and the US, there is a de facto non-aggression pact that neither side is eager to acknowledge.

“We are flying missions over Iraq, we coordinate with the Iraqi government as we conduct those,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said on Tuesday. “It’s up to the Iraqi government to de-conflict that airspace.”

For months, Iran has flashed its military prowess around the region. It has offered weapons to the Lebanese army and supported the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen who have taken over the capital, Sanaa, where a car bomb struck the Iranian Ambassador’s residence on Wednesday.

In Syria, Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported Shia militant movement, and the Iranian paramilitary Quds Force, have kept President Bashar Assad in power. And in Iraq, Iran’s once-elusive spymaster, Major-General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force who has spent a career in the shadows orchestrating terrorist attacks, including some that killed US soldiers in Iraq, has emerged as a public figure, with pictures of him on Iraq’s battlefields popping up on social media.

The apparent shift in Iran’s strategy has been most noticeable in Iraq, where even US officials acknowledge the decisive role of Iranian-backed militias, particularly in protecting Baghdad from an assault by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and also working with the US-led air campaign.

Iraqi leaders say Tehran often has been faster than Washington to offer help in a crisis. When the Islamic State stormed Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in June and moved south towards Baghdad, US President Barack Obama took a measured approach, pushing for political changes before committing to military action. But Iran jumped right in. It was the first country to send weapons to the Kurds in the north and moved quickly to protect Baghdad, working with militias it already supported.

“When Baghdad was threatened, the Iranians did not hesitate to help us, and did not hesitate to help the Kurds when Erbil was threatened,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi said in a recent television interview here, referring to the Kurdish capital in the north.

He added that the Iranians were “unlike the Americans, who hesitated to help us when Baghdad was in danger and hesitated to help our security forces”.

“And the reason Iran did not hesitate to help us was because they consider ISIS a threat to them, not only to us,” Mr Abadi said. THE NEW YORK TIMES

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