Iraq Keen to Accept Arms from Iran: Ambassador
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iraq will turn to Iran, Russia and elsewhere for arms and military advice if the Obama administration refuses to supply what Baghdad needs to halt an Al Qaeda splinter group, Iraq's ambassador to the US said.
Ambassador Lukman Faily said that though Washington is the Iraqi government's first-choice arms supplier, "we have to choose whoever is available" because of the threat from the Takfiri (extremist) groups.
Iraq would be willing to buy arms from Iran, even though purchases from Tehran are prohibited under international sanctions, Faily told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"We will do that ... if we can't get cooperation elsewhere," he was quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
The United States is supplying Iraq with F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters, but they will not arrive until fall, and the Iraqi pilots will need to be trained.
On Sunday, Russia delivered 12 fighter jets to Baghdad, a move that illustrated Iraq's willingness to turn elsewhere.
Faily said Iraqis are convinced that the administration takes the militant threat seriously and that it intends to increase its involvement in stopping the group. Iraq has bought $10 billion worth of arms from the United States, he said.
Iraq has been witnessing a new wave of violence fueled by Takfiri terrorists. The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant militants have been operating in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh, Diyala, Salahuddin and al-Anbar.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that the country’s security forces would confront the terrorists, calling the seizure of the northern city of Mosul a “conspiracy.”
The Iraqi prime minister has also blamed Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing Riyadh as a major supporter of global terrorism.
