WASHINGTON - Iran is covertly supplying military equipment to Iraq, as well as using surveillance drones to monitor militants overtaking the country, according American media reports on Thursday, citing US officials.
The programmes are meant to gather intelligence and support the embattled government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and include a communications-interception unit on the ground in Iraq, as well as drones operated from a Baghdad airfield.
The secret Iranian programmes are a rare instance in which Iran and the United States share a near-term goal: countering the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the militants who have seized towns and cities in a blitzkrieg across western and northern Iraq, The New York Times said in a dispatch.
But even as the two nations provide military support to the Prime Minister al-Maliki, they are watching each other’s actions warily as they jostle for influence in the region. Senior American officials emphasized that the parallel efforts were not coordinated, and in an appearance at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry highlighted some of the potential risks.
“From our point of view, we’ve made it clear to everyone in the region that we don’t need anything to take place that might exacerbate the sectarian divisions that are already at a heightened level of tension,” Mr. Kerry said.
The head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, Gen. Qassim Suleimani, has visited Iraq twice to plan strategy, according to the media reports. In addition, Iranian transport planes make two daily flights to Baghdad, each flight carrying 70 tons of military supplies and equipment, the US officials said.
“It’s a substantial amount,” an unidentified official was quoted as saying. “It’s not necessarily heavy weaponry but it’s not just light arms and ammunition.”
“Iran has many different power centers and different elements of Iran are sending different messages and doing different things,” a senior State Department official said Sunday. “They are definitely extremely interested in what’s happening here, to say the least.”