NBC News reported Thursday, citing a "senior security official," that three leaders of ISIS were, in fact, killed in a US air strike in Mosul. These reportedly included Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, a top aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Iraqi Defense Ministry issued a statement confirming the kill.
Washington will follow up the work at the NATO summit with intensive efforts to mobilize support for the campaign against ISIS among the Mideast regimes, some of which, like the US itself, have longstanding ties to the Islamic fundamentalist group, backing it in its attacks on the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry will visit the Persian Gulf for talks with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, with a stopover in Jordan as well. Hagel will visit Turkey, following up on the private meeting between Obama and Turkish President-Elect Erdogan at the NATO summit. These discussions will likely focus heavily on the situation in Syria, since Jordan and Turkey have been the main routes for arms supplies to the "rebels," including ISIS, fighting the Assad regime, and the location for CIA training of anti-Assad fighters.
Complicating these talks will be the tacit US cooperation with Iran in the counteroffensive by Iraqi government forces against ISIS positions in northern Iraq. The town of Amerli was retaken last week in a joint operation by Kurdish troops, Iraqi government troops, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias, while US warplanes provided air cover and struck ISIS positions.
The BBC reported Friday that Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's top clerical official, has authorized military collaboration between Iranian commanders and US, Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.
While Iran's foreign ministry officially denied the report, the subject is known to have come up in the ongoing talks in Geneva between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) over Iran's nuclear program. These talks are to resume September 18 in New York City.
General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the overseas unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has been photographed several times recently in Iraq, engaged in advising the Iraqi government and Shiite militias on military preparations against ISIS.
The Sunni-ruled Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, as well as Israel, are vehemently opposed to Iran's Shiite clerical regime and to Iran's increasingly close relations with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, as well as its alliance with the Assad regime in Syria and the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
American imperialism has stoked up religious and ethnic conflicts throughout the Middle East, particularly after its invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 brought a Shiite puppet regime to power and touched off a Sunni-Shiite civil war in the country.
Meanwhile, in an announcement that underscores the imperialist interests that underlie the decades of American and Western intervention in the Middle East, British-owned BP said Thursday that it had reached agreement with the Iraqi government to extend its lease on the enormous Rumaila oil field, the second-largest in the world. Its deal to lift oil from Rumaila was extended by five years, to 2034.
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