Commander Rules Out Iran-US Cooperation on Iraq
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces on Wednesday dismissed the notion that Iran might cooperate with the US forces to help Iraq deal with the security challenges caused by the recent terrorist attacks.
“(Military) cooperation between Iran and the US will never happen and it does not make sense at all,” Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said on Wednesday.
Firouzabadi’s comments came after US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that he would be open to cooperating with the Islamic Republic when it comes to Iraq.
"I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive," Kerry said when asked if the US would cooperate militarily with Iran.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Major General Firouzabadi played down expectations that Iran might consider its forces on the ground in Iraq to battle against the terrorists in the Arab country.
“By no means will military forces be deployed from Iran to Iraq, and, principally, there is no need for that,” he stressed.
The Iranian commander noted that a huge number of Iraqi people have volunteered to assist the military forces in the fight against foreign-backed terrorists following religious decrees by Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni clerics.
In early June, following its large-scale offensives in Iraq, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group seized control of most parts of Mosul, the second most populous city in Iraq, and its surrounding Nineveh province.
The terrorists’ attacks have reportedly forced more than half a million people in and around Mosul, the capital of Nineveh Province, to flee their homes. The Takfiri (extremist) militants have vowed to march toward the capital, Baghdad.
Presently south of Mosul, these ISIL militants are very close to the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Following a religious decree by the Iraqi senior cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, volunteers from different Iraqi cities have been shipped to the front in order to defend the capital and other cities.