Several Arab countries have offered to carry out airstrikes against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, senior State Department officials said Sunday.
Secretary of State John Kerry
Mr. Kerry, who is in Paris to attend an international conference the French are hosting on Monday on providing aid to the new Iraqi government, has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; Jidda, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Cairo.
10 Arab countries joined the United States in issuing a communiqué that endorsed efforts to confront and ultimately “destroy” ISIS, including military action to which nations would contribute “as appropriate.”
The United States has a broad definition of what it would mean to contribute to the military campaign.
“Providing arms could be contributing to the military campaign,” said a second State Department official. “Any sort of training activity would be contributing to the military campaign.”
President François Hollande of France told Iraqi officials that his country would be willing to carry out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq,
Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia has also said that his country will join the air campaign and is sending as many as eight FA-18 attack planes, as well as an early warning aircraft and a refueling plane.
such as flying arms to Erbil in the Kurdistan region or Baghdad, conducting reconnaissance flights or providing logistical support and refueling. The officials said the Arab offers were under discussion.
its airstrikes on the defense of Erbil, securing the Mosul Dam and protecting the Haditha Dam.
“The Iraqis have asked for assistance in the border regions, and that’s something we’re looking at,” the first State Department official said.
“They have a very new air force,” a third State Department official said, referring to the Iraqi military. “Their targeting is not nearly as precise as ours and they have made some real mistakes.”
Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide bases for training moderate Syrian rebels
“I disagree completely with ISIS in thought and means, but I do not accept that America fights them,” said the scholar, Sheikh Yusef Qaradawi, leader of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, in a Twitter message reported around the region. The United States, he said, “is not moved by Islamic values but by its own interests, even if it spills blood.”
his scholars’ union declared ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate “null and void,” arguing that its extremism stigmatized more mainstream Islamists and undermined broader Sunni opposition movements in Syria and Iraq.
Now his criticism of the American role may increase the fears of a backlash against Arab governments that publicly join the campaign.
groups of Iraqi forces, Kurds and Syrian rebels stepped up to provide the fighting forces on the ground.