By Bruno Gomes Guimarães and Marcelo Scalabrin Müller
Iran air strikes in Iraq raise a host of difficult questions.
Last week, Pentagon officials told Reuterson condition of anonymity that it found strong evidence that Iran had launched air strikes against the ISIS in Iraq. F-4 Phantom fighter jets were reportedly used to bomb positions of the extremist group in Diyala, a border province between the two countries and close to the Kurdish autonomous region. At first, Tehran denied any involvement in attacks against ISIS in Iraqi territory, but a few days later Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Rahimpour confirmed the action to The Guardian, although stressing that there has been no cooperation with the coalition led by the United States and that the airstrikes were requested by the Iraqi government.
On November 24, Al Jazeera broadcast a video of fighter jets flying over Iraqi territory conducting operations in support of Baghdad’s forces. Later, the HIS Jane’s Defense Weekly identified the jets as F-4 Phantom airplanes. Only Iran and Turkey have this model in the region. Given the proximity to the Iranian border and the Turkish reluctance to actively participate in the conflict, Jane’s’ analysts have concluded that the fighter jets belonged to the Iranian Air Force. It was the first visual evidence that Iranian armed forces have directly participated in the conflict.
A Iranian politician with defense links, Hamid Reza Taraghi confirmed to The New York Times that the event caught on camera was an Iranian operation conducted in coordination with the Iraqi Armed Forces. Taraghi also confirmed the existence of a buffer zone between the two countries that has allegedly been accepted by the Iraqi government. He claims that the U.S. was informed of the Iranian operation after the air sortie had already been concluded. However, U.S. command and control AWACS systems would certainly have screened the action while it was undergoing. Besides that, the U.S. military would probably have monitored the attack from its military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq.
Read the full story at The Diplomat