Teheran was the first to recognise the threat posed by the Daesh and had entered Iraq discretely, but effectively, immediately after the fall of Mosul in June. But Iranian involvement in Iraq became overt after US President Obama wrote a letter to the Grand Ayatollah in November, urging him to sign off on the nuclear deal. Soon after, America postponed the nuclear talks’ deadline by six months.

The tacit understanding with Tehran helps Washington to avoid openly antagonizing Israel and its Sunni Arab allies. As the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces have made only modest gains against the Islamic State which remains entrenched in its strongholds in the north and west, Teheran’s involvement was vital.

Last week, Jordan’s King Abdullah went to Washington to discuss the Daesh threat with US President Barack Obama as Jordan is caught between the Daesh frontlines in Iraq and Syria, and is one of the five Arab countries that have joined the US-led airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria. Abdullah favoured a “pan-regional” approach to the group.

Iran perceived the rise of the Daesh as a threat to the entire Shiite belt. So when the jihadis captured Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul as well as Saddam Hussein’s birthplace Tikrit, in just 48 hours in June this year, and moved towards Baghdad, Iran rushed weapons to the Kurds in the north and saved Kirkuk. To thwart the advance of the Islamic State, it engaged with Shia militias to protect Baghdad, sending the elite Quds, led by commander Maj Gen Qassim Suleimani, as military advisers to Samarra, Baghdad, Karbala and al-Sahra air base near Tikrit to protect Shiite areas and organise the local Shiite militias. Iran also flew surveillance drones in Iraq and Iranian pilots helped fly Russian-made Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft that Tehran had supplied to the Baghdad regime several months ago.

But the current air raids with F-4 fighters mark a distinct new phase of Iranian involvement. According to official sources, in late November, Iranian F-4 Phantom fighters attacked the Islamic State in eastern Diyala province, the first open military action against Daesh by Teheran. The US-led coalition has decided to leave the eastern and southern Iraqi provinces which have huge Shia populations to Teheran. Washington sources admit that Teheran has legitimate interests in the region and is supporting Baghdad in a manner that does not stir sectarian turmoil there.

In order to protect the Shia belt, Iran offered weapons to the Lebanese Army and supported the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen who have taken over the capital, Sana. In Syria, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Al Quds personnel are helping President Bashar al-Assad.

Now, all eyes are on Qassim Suleimani, who answers only to Iran’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Suleimani had rushed to Baghdad within hours of the fall of Mosul and has maintained near continuous presence there ever since, to coordinate the capital’s defence by rallying all militias, most notably Asa’ib ahl al-Haq, Kata’ib Hezbollah and the Badr Brigades. In August, he went north to help the Kurds when Erbil was in danger, bringing in Iranian troops and airmen. The same month, taking advantage of US air raids, Suleimani rallied the militias, Kurds and Iraqi army and wrestled the Shia Turkmen town of Amerli in central Iraq from Daesh. The Islamic State was also expelled from Jurf al-Sakhar town, south of Baghdad, and Iraq’s largest oil refinery in Baiji taken back.

Kobane

Meanwhile, the puissant Kurds of Iraq and Syria have staved off the near-imminent fall of Kobane for almost three months, forcing Daesh to launch an attack from the Turkey border, though Ankara denied that its territory was used to attack the Syrian town. However, according to Associated Press quoting the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Nawaf Khalil, spokesman for Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party, on Saturday, November 29, a suicide bomber in an armored vehicle reportedly detonated his explosives on the border crossing between Kobani and Turkey. Khalil claimed that hitherto Daesh used to attack the town from three sides, but on November 29 they attacked from four sides.

Although the Turkish government confirmed the suicide attack on the Syrian side of the border, it denied that the vehicle had crossed over from its territory. But Kobane-based activist Mustafa Bali told media that Daesh fighters were launching attacks from grain silos on the Turkish side of the border. The US-led coalition made an airstrike Saturday morning on the eastern side of the town. Around eight Kurdish fighters and 17 jihadis were killed in the latest round of fighting.

It was the dogged Kobane resistance that brought international pressure on Turkey and forced it to open its borders to allow fighters from Iraqi Kurdistan to help Kobane, which is an enclave in northern Syria bordering Turkey and disconnected from the rest of Syrian Kurdistan. The international media occupied positions on a hill overlooking Kobane from where they could see everything happening in the Syrian side of Kobane, so Turkey had to agree to open the border. The media also exposed the fact that the Turks were doing nothing to help Kobane and were in fact helping in the passage of guns and manpower for Daesh; all fighters on the Daesh side passed through Turkey. Once the border was opened, the Turkish Kurds also tried to help and forced Daesh on the defensive.

Libyan camps

The Islamic State, meanwhile, has set up training camps in eastern Libya, according to American General David Rodriguez, head of the US Africa Command, who said the group’s strength currently stands at a few hundred militants. He said these militants were not volunteers from outside the country but members of militias who had switched over to the Daesh.

Overall, the Daesh have so far managed to hold the territory seized by them in both Syria and Iraq, in the face of stiff resistance from the Iraqi and Syrian armies and Shi’ite and Kurdish militias. They lost some towns on the edges of their Iraqi territory, particularly in ethnically mixed areas, but have consolidated power in their Sunni Muslim heartland. Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Badr Organization that joined hands with the Kurdish peshmerga to reclaim Saadiya and Jalawla near the Iranian border, asserts that the Daesh can no longer make fresh advances or territorial gains, and is confined to the Sunni Muslim provinces of Anbar in the west and Salahuddin north of Baghdad and Nineveh, which contains the city of Mosul.

Currently, Daesh is in no mood to retreat from territory under its control. On Friday, December 5, a suicide bomber led an attack on a Syria government-held enclave near Deir Ezzor military airport in eastern Syria, killing at least 19 troops and militia. The airport is a crucial supply line for besieged troops in the city. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the media that the jihadis took over several Government positions in the area and seized at least two tanks, an armoured vehicle, artillery and heavy machine guns from these positions; they lost at least seven of their own men.

It is to be seen how the open entry of Iranian ‘boots on the ground’, in both Iraq and Syria, impacts the Daesh fortunes.

References

-        http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Dec-05/280052-obama-discussing-isis-with-jordans-king.ashx

-        http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-us-iranian-forces-move-separate-areas-230336176.html?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=rand_social

-        http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/middleeast/iran-airstrikes-hit-islamic-state-in-iraq.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0

-        http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2014/dec/07/qassem-suleimani-middle-east-mastermind-islamic-state?CMP=twt_gu

-        http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/islamic-state-group-attacking-kobani-turkey-27248275

-        http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4903/turkey-and-the-kurds

-        http://rt.com/op-edge/209399-kobani-iraq-syria-war-turkey/#.VHdY_5VF6to.twitter

-        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11272216/Islamic-State-has-training-camps-in-Libya-warns-US-commander.html

-        http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/04/us-mideast-crisis-islamicstate-idUSKCN0JI0EJ20141204?utm_source=twitter

-        http://www.dailypioneer.com/world/isis-advance-in-syria-kills-19-troops-militia.html