By Samia Nakhoul

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Almost a year after Islamic State's shock capture of Mosul, Iraq's second city, the black flags of the jihadis have been raised over Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province to the west of Baghdad, seat of Iraq’s increasingly theoretical central government.

Nobody talks of Mosul or recapturing it from Islamic State. It is a forgotten city. Now it is all about the fall of Ramadi, the neighboring ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in central Syria and beyond - the Libyan city of Sirte, hometown of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

To the eyes of many in the region, the real strategic loss behind the IS seizure of two Sunni cities in Iraq and Syria in a week is the evaporation of any Sunni alternative to the jihadis.

Although many leaders dismissed IS as vainglorious when it declared its cross-border caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq last summer, in its cohesion and purpose it is now seen by some – particularly Iraq’s minority Sunnis – as more of a state than the Iraqi government it is fighting.

"Simply put, the Islamic State is, or is on the verge of becoming, what it claims to be: a state," wrote David Kilcullen who was a key player in the US 2007-08 Iraq troop 'surge' and a close observer of the rise of Islamic State.

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A car is engulfed by flames during clashes in the city of Ramadi, May 16, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer

He argues that unless Washington and its allies urgently change their counter-terrorism strategy the threat will only get worse. A coalition including the United States has been engaged in air strikes against Islamic State last summer, yet the group's advance has continued.

"ISIS fights like a state... It fields more than 25,000 fighters, including a hard core of ex-Baathist professionals and Qaeda veterans. It has a hierarchical unit organization and rank structure, populated by former regular officers of Saddam Hussein's military," added Kilcullen in the Australian Quarterly Essay.

The Islamic State already has the foundations of a state.

It controls territory that includes major cities and covers a third each of Iraq and Syria; it has its own military and security force, a self-proclaimed administration that runs daily life - schools, government offices, utilities, hospitals, taxation and a judiciary system that follows sharia law.

Its resources are vast, including oilfields, refineries and agricultural land. It operates more like a regular army with a recruiting network, training camps and a propaganda machine.

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Displaced Sunni people, who fled the violence in the city of Ramadi, arrive at the outskirts of Bagh …

In videos released by IS, its fighters and leader Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi confidently predict “the liberation of Anbar is the start of the liberation of Baghdad and Kerbala from the rawafed” - a derogatory term Sunni jihadis use to describe Shi’ites they condemn as infidels and idolaters.

The jihadis, who intersperse these propaganda films with shots of their training, along with religious slogans, look young, fit, well-armed and clad in crisp new military uniforms – not the picture offered by their opponents.

DEVASTATING DEFEAT

The Iraqi army crumbled in Ramadi in much the same way as it evaporated last summer when IS seized Mosul and overran swathes of north and central Iraq.

Iraq’s security forces were not “driven from” Ramadi, Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff said acidly in Brussels, they “drove out of Ramadi”.

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A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter launches mortar shells towards Zummar, controlled by Islamic State (IS), …

Just as important, the fall of this strategic city comes only weeks after IS itself was pushed out of Tikrit further north, exciting premature speculation that the jihadis might be on the run. The group's capture of Ramadi happened in tandem with its seizure of Palmyra, with its two millennia-old Roman columns and priceless antiquities.

IS needed no more than a few hundred fighters to take Palmyra, highlighting the acute manpower shortage faced by Bashar al-Assad’s government, now into its fifth year of a civil war that has claimed more than 220,000 lives and displaced around half of Syria’s population.

Palmyra, or Tadmur in Arabic, is a world heritage site the jihadis might now destroy, as they did the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud this year.

It has great strategic and symbolic value for IS, with nearby gas fields, and roads to the capital Damascus, Homs, the cradle of the revolt against Assad in Syria’s center, and to the south.

The fall of Ramadi is potentially devastating to the Iraqi government. It is the capital of the vast Anbar province, which stretches to Iraq’s western border with Jordan and Syria.

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A sign (in white) by the Islamic State is seen in the city of Mosul July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

This was the launchpad of the Sunni jihadi insurgency against the American occupation after the US-led invasion of 2003. Islamic State now controls most of it and can threaten the western approaches to Baghdad, or even strike south into the Shi’ite heartland – as its propaganda videos threaten.

The Shi’ite-dominated government in Baghdad last year appointed Haidar al-Abadi as prime minister to replace Nuri al-Maliki, whose policies were seen as authoritarian and sectarian by Iraq’s alienated Sunni minority and Kurds, who run their own self-governing region in northern Iraq.

Backed by the United States and by Iran, Abadi has tried to be more inclusive, but the collapse of the Iraqi army leaves him reliant for ground troops on Shi’ite militia, trained and influenced by Iran, which were a primary cause of the alienation of these minorities in the first place.

Meanwhile, the government has failed to deliver on promised arms and training for Sunni tribal militia that drove IS’s predecessors from al-Qaeda out of Anbar in 2006-09.

This fits the IS narrative, that the fall of Ramadi shows that a Shi’ite majority government will never provide the arms that those Sunni tribes in Anbar would need if they were to oppose the jihadis, and therefore there is no alternative to IS.

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A fighter from the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), …

TOO LATE FOR SAHWAT

As in Syria, furthermore, the striking battlefield successes of the jihadis are a powerful recruiting sergeant for disaffected Sunni youth.

Hassan Hassan, a Middle East analyst and author of a book on IS, says the real significance of Ramadi is that its Sunni tribes had been resisting the self-declared caliphate ever since Mosul fell and even long before.

U.S. and Iraqi talk of reviving the Sahwat (awakening) – the U.S.-armed Sunni militia that earlier defeated al-Qaeda - is now probably too late.

“The debate within the Sunni community in Iraq is now about those Sunnis in Ramadi who were cooperating with the government against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for IS) but have lost and were not capable to confront them. Other Sunni cities resisting Daesh will now think twice”.

Now confronted on the Ramadi frontline by Hashd al-Shaabi, the powerful, pro-Iranian and Shi’ite People’s Mobilisation militia that was blamed for violent reprisals against Sunni civilians after the fall of Tikrit, “the Sunnis are accepting Daesh as their Sunni army”, Hassan says.

“The moment has passed for the Americans to recruit Sunnis to fight the terrorist organization. This is past, it’s gone, it’s too late. Ramadi has been an idea for 10 years now and it collapsed”, Hassan says. “That is a watershed moment for Iraq”.

Tikrit, moreover, was no victory, Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote this week.

“Tikrit was a campaign that failed to give Iraq’s Sunnis the reassurance they needed that the central government would support them in resisting ISIS or following up an ISIS defeat with immediate efforts to secure Tikrit and allow its Sunni Arab population to return.”

Ramadi and Tikrit taken together, in that light do not cancel each other out so much as demonstrate that the Sunnis cannot depend for their security either on the United States or on forces loyal to Iran. With insufficient means of their own, that is driving them toward the Islamic State.

"Local Sunni populations in IS-controlled areas may hate the group, but they often see the alternatives as even worse, in part because the militias have committed sectarian abuses after recapturing IS territory, but also because IS is still peddling sectarian fear of Shi'ites, or of the chaos that would result from its fall, presenting itself as defender of the Sunnis," Kilcullen said.

"Western countries have a clear interest in destroying ISIS, but counter-insurgency should not even be under discussion. This is a straight-up conventional fight against a state-like entity, and the goal should be to utterly annihilate ISIS as a state."

(editing by Janet McBride)

War, what's it good for?

Aside from countless deaths of innocent civilians of course, it means a GDP boost for the biggest exporter of weapons on earth, the United States, and even more profits for the US military-industrial complex. Profits which mean the shareholders of America's arms manufacturers get even richer.

Which is why following months of middle-eastern sabre ratling and numerous quasi-wars already raging in the region, moments ago the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 10 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters to Saudi Arabia for $1.9 billion, the first step in "a major multibillion-dollar modernization of the Saudi navy's eastern fleet."

MH-60R Seahawk helicopter

According to Reuters, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified lawmakers on Thursday about the possible arms sale, which has been discussed for years.

The Saudi government had requested a sale of the 10 MH-60R multi-mission helicopters, built by Sikorsky Aircraft, a unit of United Technologies Corp and Lockheed, as well as radars, missiles and other equipment, the agency said.

Why do the Saudis need a modernization of their already state of the art weapons?

The proposed sale would improve Saudi Arabia’s capability to meet current and future threats from enemy weapons systems, as well as secondary missions such as vertical replenishment, search and rescue, and communications relay.

"Saudi Arabia will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense," the agency said.

In other words, the Saudis, by funding ISIS, are creating the very "regional threat" (which recently has launched numerous false flag attacks against the same Saudi Arabia to provie the cover for needing such a modernization) that they need to wage war against.

But wait, there's more!

Because just to make sure the same vendors of lethal equipment have happy repeat customers, the Pentagon also announced a $1.9 billion deal with Israel to supply 3,000 Hellfire precision missiles, 250 AIM-120C advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, 4,100 GBU-39 small diameter bombs and 50 BLU-113 bunker buster bombs. The order also includes 14,500 tail kits for Joint Direct Attack Munitions for 220kg and 900kg bombs and a variety of Paveway laser-guided bomb kits according to RT.

Bunker buster bomb in moment of deployment

Wait, wasn't the US said to have tarnished its relations with Israel in recent months following various diplomatic snubs by Netanyahu and Obama? Well, it was all for show: according to Israeli media deal is seen as "compensation" for the rapprochement between Iran and the US.

Curiously, this is precisely what we wrote two weeks ago in "Obama's Real Motive Behind The Iran Deal: A Backdoor Channel To Sell Weapons To Saudi Arabia" only we can now add Israel in the mix.

“The proposed sale of this equipment will provide Israel the ability to support its self-defense needs," the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said, adding that the new contract is meant to“replenish”Israel's arsenal without supplying the country with any kind of new weapons.

In November 2014 it was reported that Pentagon was going to supplying Israel with 3,000 smart bombs, similar to those used by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza last summer, where an estimated 100 tons of munitions were dropped.

So "modernizing" the Saudi arsenal and "replenishing" that of Israel.

In other words, Obama's warming up to Iran was nothing but a back door diplomatic loophole to arm Iran's "threatened" neighbors in the region. Just as we forecast.

As for the beneficiaries, once again there is no question: the main contractors to fulfill the lucrative Israeli arms deal will be Boeing, Ellwood National Forge, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missile Systems, AFP reported.

But wait, there is even more!

Because, just in case arming Israel and Saudi Arabia with sophisticated modern weaponry isn't enough to assure of a full on war in the coming weeks as the balance of power in the middle east once again shifts dramatically, the US - to really make sure America's MIC has even morehappy repeat customers, will also deliver 2,000 AT-4 anti-tank rockets to Iraq as early as next week, 1,000 more than announced on Wednesday, to help Baghdad combat suicide car bombings by Islamic State.

Soldier firing AT-4 anti tank rocket

Wait, anti-tank bombs to counter suicide bombers? Apparently yes:

Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said the delivery would help Iraq defend against approaching suicide bombers driving vehicles packed with explosives, attacks used by Islamic State militants last weekend to help them seize Ramadi from Iraqi forces. "This is a good counter to that (type of bombing)," Warren said.

Warren said the anti-tank weapons would allow the Iraqi forces to destroy approaching suicide car bombers at a distance. Relying on small arms requires disabling the engine or killing the driver, which can be difficult, he said.

And all of this why? So that the Saudis and Iran can "fight" against a Saudi-funded ISIS force, while Israel has "defensive" weapons against an Iran which may become a threat to Israel because of its recently friendly relations with the US.

Or, to conclude with the same summary we provided two weeks ago when predicting this outcome:

In other words, we have, for the past few years, been on the edge of a razor thin Middle Eastern balance of power equilibrium which prevented any one nation or alliance from garnering an outsized influence of military power.

All of that is about to change the moment the MIC figurehead known as president Obama greenlights the dispatch of billions of dollars in fighters, drones, missile batteries, and surveillance equipment to Saudi Arabia and its peers, in the process dramatically reshaping the balance of power status quo and almost certainly leading to yet another middle eastern war which will inevitably drag in not only Israel and Russia at least in a proxy capacity, but ultimately, the US as well.

Just as the US military industrial complex wanted.

Because as every Keynesian fanatic will tell you: in a world saturated by debt, and where organic growth is no longer possible, there is only one remaining option.

War.

“Black lives matter.” For the past nine months, this rallying cry has permeated street corners, protests, tweets, news conferences, and even the cover ofTime magazine.

Last August, the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brownby a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer kick-started the efforts of activists protesting against police brutality and violence. By now, the names Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray have become synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement. But solely focusing on their stories has come at the expense of another group affected by police violence: black women.

Rachel Gilmer, associate director of the African American Policy Forum, says the reason black women’s stories are excluded from the discussion is simple.

“Across the board, all the way up from the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative down to the grassroots movements that we’ve seen rise in this country in response to state violence, men and boys are seen as the primary target of racial injustice,” she says. “This has led to the idea that women and girls of color are not doing as bad, or that we’re not at risk at all.”

Here’s Why You Should Care: African American women are three times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts, and young black girls are suspended from school at six times the rate of their white female peers. Add to that the increased risk of poverty, violence, and sexual assault, and it’s clear that African American girls are not all right.

Indeed, in light of the challenges black women and girls face, the AAPF recently coauthored a policy brief and launched a social media campaign titled “Say Her Name.” The effort aims to amplify the stories of African American women and girls who have been victims of police violence.

“We wanted to launch ‘Say Her Name’ to really uplift the lives and experiences of those who have been killed by police and the many other forms of police violence black women experience,” Gilmer explains, noting that officer-involved sexual assault often garners little response.

Last year, former Oklahoma City Police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw was charged with sexuallyassaulting approximately 13 black women while on duty. Holtzclaw allegedly raped, sodomized, and preyed on his victims because he believed they were of a “lower social status” and had “reason to fear” the authorities. While his alleged actions are horrific, Holtzclaw’s case has yet to become a national cause in either the Black Lives Matter movement or in the mainstream conversation on police violence. The AAPF’s “Say Her Name” campaign aims to change that.

On Thursday, thousands of protesters took to the streets across the nation to amplify the names of black female victims of state violence. In San Francisco, a group of topless black women took the streets to demand justice for slain black women. In New York City, thousands flooded the streets to uplift women such as Rekia Boyd, Shelly Frey, Yvette Smith, Mya Hall, Kendra James, Natasha McKenna, and Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was just seven when she was killed by police.

The AAPF report noted that the controversial stop-and-frisk policing tactic, which is used by law enforcement officers across the nation, tends to be associated with males of color. However, in New York City, where the policy has been deemed unconstitutional because it unfairly profiles blacks and Latinos, 53.4 percent of all of women stopped by NYPD officers were black, and 27.5 percent were Latino. The numbers of black women accosted by law enforcement is on par with their black male counterparts, yet women are often absent from the discussion about police overreach.

RELATED: Can These Activists Force Chicago's Next Mayor to Take on Police Reform?

In addition to raising awareness about black women and girls who have been killed by police violence, the AAPF report recommends that policies “be developed using an intersectional gender and racial lens” and that “spaces must be created to discuss the ways in which patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia impact black communities as a whole.” The AAPF also suggests the definition of police violence be expanded beyond beatdowns and shootings to include sexual assault as well.

While some people accuse those who insist on including women’s voices in the conversation of being divisive, Gilmer says situating black women and girls in discussions on police violence will only strengthen the cause.

“When we include girls in the narrative, it becomes much more of a conversation about structural racism,” she says, explaining that the problem of police violence won’t go away until systematic inequality is addressed.

For Gilmer and those who participated in “Say Her Name” protests across the country, it’s necessary to include women in the conversation on police abuse. “We should uplift black women’s names because all black lives matter,” she says.

Wochit
Islamic State Has Full Control of Syria's Palmyra

BEIRUT (AP) — Islamic State group militants hunted down Syrian government troops and loyalists in the newly captured town of Palmyra, shooting or beheading them in public as a warning, and imposing their strict interpretation of Islam, activists said Friday.

The purge, which relied mostly on informants, was aimed at solidifying the extremists' grip on the strategic town that was overrun Wednesday by IS fighters.

It also was part of a campaign to win the support of President Bashar Assad's opponents, who have suffered from a government crackdown in the town and surrounding province in the last four years of Syria's civil war.

The strategy included promises to fix the electricity and water grids — after Palmyra is cleared of regime loyalists, according to an activist in the historic town. The man is known in the activist community by the nom de guerre of Omar Hamza because he fears for his security.

The capture of Palmyra has raised alarm that the militants might try to destroy one of the Mideast's most spectacular archaeological sites — a well-preserved, 2,000-year-old Roman-era city on the town's edge — as they have destroyed others in Syria and Iraq. For the moment, however, their priority appeared to be in imposing their rule, with activists saying there were no signs the group moved in on the ancient ruins.

In neighboring Iraq, IS militants made more territorial gains, seizing the small town of Husseiba, less than a week after capturing the provincial capital of Ramadi, said tribal leader Sheikh Rafie al-Fahdawi.

They captured the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria on Thursday after Iraqi forces pulled out. The fall of the al-Walid crossing in Anbar province will help the militants shuttle weaponry and reinforcements more easily across the border of the two countries where they have declared a self-styled caliphate.

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This picture released on Thursday, May 21, 2015 by the website of Islamic State militants, shows a b …

The IS militants imposed a curfew in Palmyra from 5 p.m. until sunrise and banned people from leaving town until Saturday morning to ensure that none of the government figures they seek manage to escape, activists and officials said. Jihadis went through the streets telling residents via loudspeakers not to give refuge to Assad loyalists.

IS commanders also fanned out to Palmyra's mosques to deliver sermons during Friday's weekly communal prayers. Mosques were packed after fighters on Thursday had urged people to attend and told women to cover their faces.

The sermons were mostly about the importance of performing the five-times-a-day prayers in the mosques and women having to cover their faces and dress in loose clothes, Hamza said via Skype. At the mosque where he prayed, the person delivering the sermon was a non-Syrian Arab, as were most of the leaders in the group in town, he said, while the fighters were Syrians.

In his sermon, the speaker warned that women not wearing the proper Islamic attire will be flogged.

Fighters were carrying out a bloody, door-to-door search to find and kill fugitive soldiers and known Assad loyalists, several activists said.

Prompted by the IS warnings not to provide shelter, some residents came forward with information about troops who had tried to melt into the population when the militants stormed into the town, said another activist who goes by the nom de guerre of Bebars al-Talawy for his security.

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This picture released on Thursday, May 21, 2015 by the website of Islamic State militants, shows dam …

Amateur video posted on a pro-IS Facebook page showed residents and militants gathering around two bloodied men in military uniforms on a Palmyra street.

"Let all the residents see them," one of the men shown in the video told an IS fighter. Photos circulating on pro-IS Twitter feeds showed purported government troops shot to death or decapitated.

The video and photos appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting.

Hamza and al-Talawy said as many as 280 loyalists and government soldiers were summarily killed, some shot in the head or beheaded in a public square.

Militants abducted soldiers and pro-government gunmen from homes, shops and other places where they had sought to hide, said al-Talawy, who is based in the nearby city of Homs.

"The search is going from house to house, shop to shop, and people on the streets have to show identity cards," said Osama al-Khatib, an activist from Palmyra who is now in Turkey. Al-Khatib last contacted his friends and relatives Friday morning in Palmyra before the government cut off phones and Internet service in the town. The communication was later partially restored.

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Map shows location of IS control.; 2c x 5 inches; 96.3 mm x 127 mm;

Al-Khatib said some 150 bodies lay in the streets, including 25 residents who were members of the pro-government militia known as the Popular Committees.

The door-to-door hunt was similar to a purge the militants carried out in Ramadi after it fell Sunday.

On Thursday, gunmen believed to be from IS kidnapped a Christian priest, the Rev. Jacques Mourad, from the village of Qaryatayn, southwest of Palmyra. The 48-year-old Mourad and his bodyguard were taken to an unknown location, according to a priest in in Damascus, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He said the priest's computer and car also were seized.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said he received with "deep sadness" the news of Mourad's abduction.

Hamza said the public killings in Palmyra appeared aimed at winning support of residents who opposed Assad's rule, and that the strategy was succeeding with some.

"People don't seem to be resentful of the new guidelines. They are saying it is much better than the regime, which used to terrorize the whole town, especially through the arrest campaigns," Hamza said.

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This picture released on Thursday, May 21, 2015 by the website of Islamic State militants, shows the …

He said electrical power — which had been out for 10 days as Syrian troops and Is militants battled each other — was partially restored Friday.

Hamza said there were no signs the group was moving on the ancient ruins in Palmyra, a caravan oasis that linked the civilizations of Persia, India, China with the Roman empire through trade.

Instead, IS fighters had moved into all the government buildings, he added.

But he and other activists reported that Syrian aircraft dropped barrel bombs near the military security headquarters at the northern edge of the ancient ruins. There were no reports of casualties or damage to the site.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Antiquities and Museum Department in the Syrian capital of Damascus, said there were no gunmen in the area of Palmyra's ruins, which once attracted thousands of tourists.

But he acknowledged that "there are arrests and liquidations in Palmyra." He added that IS fighters are "moving in residential areas, terrifying people and taking revenge."

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This picture released on Thursday, May 21, 2015 by the website of Islamic State militants, shows the …

Gov. Talal Barazi of the central province of Homs, which includes Palmyra, said IS fighters have abducted men and "might have committed massacres." He added that about 1,400 families fled the town of 65,000 before IS halted the exodus Thursday.

Hamza said most of those who left are regime supporters, including a clan from the neighboring Deir el-Zour province that had been based in Palmyra to help defend the government.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and al-Talawy said the next target for IS appears to be the Tayfour air base near Palmyra, where many government troops had retreated. They said the militants were moving reinforcements to the area.

Activists al-Talawy and al-Khatib said IS had also captured the phosphate mines at Khunayfis, near Palmyra.

The town of Husseiba in Iraq's Anbar province had fallen overnight to IS forces when police and tribal fighters withdrew after running out of ammunition, said al-Fahdawi, the tribal leader.

"We have not received any assistance from the government. Our men fought to the last bullet and several of them were killed," he told the AP in a telephone interview.

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This file photo released on Sunday, May 17, 2015, by the Syrian official news agency SANA shows the …

Husseiba is about 7 kilometers (4 miles) east of Ramadi, where IS militants routed Iraqi forces in their most significant advance in nearly a year.

Al-Fahdawi said that with the fall of Husseiba, the militants have moved closer to the strategic Habbaniyah military base, which is still held by Iraqi forces.

The U.N. World Food Program said it is rushing food assistance into Anbar province to help tens of thousands of residents who have fled the latest fighting.

About 25,000 people received emergency food assistance Thursday, and supplies for an additional 15,000 displaced people were en route to another area near the militant-held city of Fallujah, the WFP said.

The Iraqi government plans to launch a counteroffensive in Anbar involving Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which have played a key role in pushing back IS militants elsewhere in the country. The presence of the militias could fuel sectarian tensions in the overwhelmingly Sunni province, where anger and mistrust toward the Shiite-led government runs deep.

In Washington, U.S. defense officials said Iran has entered the fight to retake a major Iraqi oil refinery in Beiji from IS militants, contributing small numbers of troops — including some operating artillery and other heavy weapons — in support of advancing Iraqi ground forces.

Two U.S. defense officials said Iranian forces have taken a significant offensive role in the Beiji operation in recent days, in conjunction with Iraqi Shiite militia. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Iran's role in Iraq is a major complicating factor for the U.S. as it searches for the most effective approach to countering the Islamic State group. U.S. officials have said they do not oppose contributions from Iran-supported Iraqi Shiite militias as long as they operate under the command and control of the Iraqi government.

The U.S. has been leading a coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against IS militants in Iraq and Syria.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.