The United States has graduated 6,000 new Iraqi Security Forces fighters from its four training sites across Iraq, the Pentagon said Monday, even as U.S. influence in the country appears to be slipping.
“We’re continuing to train aggressively as many Iraqi Security Forces as we can,” said Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren.
The U.S. has committed to training up to 25,000 new Iraqi Security Forces to help Iraq reconstitute its army after it fell apart against the Islamic State last summer. Three Iraq Army divisions fled, abandoning vehicles and weapons to the Islamic State.
However, in the current battle for control in Tikrit, Iraq, the U.S. finds itself on the sidelines, even as one of the Iraqi ground commanders told Agence France-Presse over the weekend that coalition air support was needed because the Iraqi air force strikes have not been effective.
In the last week, U.S. officials have noted that operations in Tikrit are being led by more than 20,000 Iranian-backed militia fighters encircling the city, including the leader of Iran’s Quds force, General Qassem Suleimani.
Until this weekend’s air support request, which was not repeated by the Iraqi government, the U.S. has not been a welcome participant in the battle for Tikrit, given the heavy Iranian militia presence leading that offensive. The risk of enflaming a larger regional conflict by hitting Iranian forces so far seems to have kept U.S. and coalition airpower away.
“As of right now we have not conducted any strikes in direct support of operations in Tikrit,” Warren said. “But we are in very close contact with our Iraqi partners.”
