Reuters, Baghdad :
The United States is contemplating talks with its arch enemy Iran to support the Iraqi government in its battle with Sunni Islamist insurgents who routed Baghdad’s army and seized the north of the country in the past week.
The stunning onslaught by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant threatens to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian warfare across a crescent of the Middle East, with no regard for national borders that the fighters reject.
Joint action between the United States and Iran to help prop up the government of their mutual ally Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, would be a major breakthrough after hostility dating to Iran’s 1979 revolution, and demonstrates the degree of alarm raised by the lightning insurgent advance.
The ISIL fighters captured the mainly ethnic Turkmen city of Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq overnight after heavy fighting on Sunday, solidifying their grip on the north.
“The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed. Shi’ite families have fled to the west and Sunni families have fled to the east,” said a city official who asked not to be identified.
Tal Afar is a short drive west from Mosul, the north’s main city, which ISIL seized last week at the start of a drive that has plunged the country into the worst crisis since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011.
ISIL, seeking a Sunni caliphate in Iraq and Syria, is also fighting Syria’s Iranian-backed government. It has support among some in Iraq’s Sunni minority who see the Shi’ite Maliki as both a pawn of Iran and of the United States, whose forces ended decades of Sunni dominance by toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Sunday that Washington was considering making
contact with Iran to find ways to aid the Baghdad government. Publicly, the White House said no such contacts had yet taken place.
The U.S. overture came a day after Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate elected last year, said Tehran would consider working with the United States in Iraq if it saw that Washington was willing to confront “terrorist groups”.
U.S. President Barack Obama has ruled out sending troops back into Iraq although he says he is weighing other military options, such as air strikes. A U.S. aircraft carrier has sailed into the Gulf.
The only U.S. military contingent on the ground are the security staff at the U.S. embassy. Washington said on Sunday it was evacuating some diplomatic staff and sending about 100 extra marines and other personnel to help safeguard the facilities.
The sprawling fortified compound on the banks of the Tigris is the largest and most expensive diplomatic mission ever built, a vestige of the days when 170,000 U.S. troops fought to put down a civil war and mass sectarian cleansing that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
The United States is contemplating talks with its arch enemy Iran to support the Iraqi government in its battle with Sunni Islamist insurgents who routed Baghdad’s army and seized the north of the country in the past week.
The stunning onslaught by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant threatens to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian warfare across a crescent of the Middle East, with no regard for national borders that the fighters reject.
Joint action between the United States and Iran to help prop up the government of their mutual ally Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, would be a major breakthrough after hostility dating to Iran’s 1979 revolution, and demonstrates the degree of alarm raised by the lightning insurgent advance.
The ISIL fighters captured the mainly ethnic Turkmen city of Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq overnight after heavy fighting on Sunday, solidifying their grip on the north.
“The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed. Shi’ite families have fled to the west and Sunni families have fled to the east,” said a city official who asked not to be identified.
Tal Afar is a short drive west from Mosul, the north’s main city, which ISIL seized last week at the start of a drive that has plunged the country into the worst crisis since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011.
ISIL, seeking a Sunni caliphate in Iraq and Syria, is also fighting Syria’s Iranian-backed government. It has support among some in Iraq’s Sunni minority who see the Shi’ite Maliki as both a pawn of Iran and of the United States, whose forces ended decades of Sunni dominance by toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Sunday that Washington was considering making
contact with Iran to find ways to aid the Baghdad government. Publicly, the White House said no such contacts had yet taken place.
The U.S. overture came a day after Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate elected last year, said Tehran would consider working with the United States in Iraq if it saw that Washington was willing to confront “terrorist groups”.
U.S. President Barack Obama has ruled out sending troops back into Iraq although he says he is weighing other military options, such as air strikes. A U.S. aircraft carrier has sailed into the Gulf.
The only U.S. military contingent on the ground are the security staff at the U.S. embassy. Washington said on Sunday it was evacuating some diplomatic staff and sending about 100 extra marines and other personnel to help safeguard the facilities.
The sprawling fortified compound on the banks of the Tigris is the largest and most expensive diplomatic mission ever built, a vestige of the days when 170,000 U.S. troops fought to put down a civil war and mass sectarian cleansing that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
