Bloodthirsty al Qaeda-inspired insurgents moved dangerously close to Baghdad on Thursday, after capturing major cities in northern Iraq and threatening to destabilize the entire oil-rich region.
The desperate Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called for citizens in the predominantly Shiite capital to take up arms against the approaching Sunni insurgents.
Thousands of men, young and old, have been flooding into army recruiting stations, vowing to defend Baghdad against fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who were just 80 miles outside the capital, Iraqi state TV reported.
President Obama on Thursday pledged to help the besieged Iraqi government.
“We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter,” Obama following an Oval Office meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
But Obama didn’t provide any specifics.
While the president talked, Iran acted.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had teamed up with Iraqi forces to recapture 85 percent of Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The action came soon after Iran’s leader pledged to stop the insurgents.
“This is an extremist, terrorist group that is acting savagely,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said.
Iraq has reportedly asked Obama for airstrikes.
The president made no commitments, but added: “I don’t rule out anything.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the bloody uprising in Iraq a “colossal failure” of Obama’s security team.
“Everybody in his national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced,” McCain said Thursday ahead of a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Iraq.
“It’s a colossal failure of American security policy.”
As Washington bickered and pointed fingers, insurgents rattled swords and vowed to sack Baghdad.
“Continue your march as the battle is not yet raging,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in a recording posted on the militant group’s website on Thursday.
“It will rage in Baghdad and Karbala. So be ready for it. Put on your belts and get ready.”
The al Qaeda splinter group claims to have scores to settle in Baghdad.
“We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there,” the Islamic State spokesman said.
Some of those scores have already been settled, in the most gruesome and inhumane manner possible.
The Telegraph newspaper reported that 15 members of the Iraqi special forces were beheaded by insurgents shortly after the Islamic State took over the northern city of Kirkuk.
The terrorists’ reign is also exacting a brutal toll on the youngest victims, as thousands of children and their parents fled for their lives out of the nation’s second-largest city, Mosul.
A significant portion of those displaced were already refugees, who had fled fighting in neighboring Syria.
“Massive traffic jams and blocked roads are seriously hindering access and movement of aid, as hundreds of thousands flee from the raging violence and chaos,” said Aram Shakaram, acting director of Save the Children in Iraq.
“As an immediate emergency priority, we will distribute water, food and hygiene kits to people fleeing Mosul in coordination with local authorities and organizations responding to the crisis.”
The capital — well-armed government forces and Shiite civilians willing to die defending their homes — would be a difficult military target for the Islamic State.
Insurgents have been gobbling up Sunni-dominated cities in the north, such as Baiji, home to Iraq’s largest oil refinery.
The 310,000-barrel-a-day plant stopped producing overnight and militants took over, police said. But the nation’s oil minister, Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi, said he believes the government is still in control of the site.
Fuel speculators, worried about the potential for a shortage caused by the apparent insurgent takeover, pushed the price of oil up by $1.64 a barrel, or 1.6 percent, to $106.04 at mid-morning.
The administration “did not give them a hard no — it was ‘Thanks for your interest and we will talk about it more,’ ” a senior US military official told The Daily Beast.
For now NATO appears to be on the sidelines, and not keen on taking a military role in Iraq’s escalating violence.
“I don’t see a role for NATO in Iraq,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in Madrid on Thursday.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague pledged humanitarian assistance for Iraq but drew the line at military intervention.
“We’re very concerned about the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, and with our very large humanitarian budget we may be in a position to assist with that, and we’re looking at that now,” Hague said in a BBC interview.
“But we will not be getting involved militarily. We will support the United States in anything that they decide to do, we’re in consultation with them. But I stress again it is for the Iraqi leadership primarily to respond to this.”
The lightning-fast advances by Islamic State forces have put a scare into Iraq’s long-time border frenemy, Iran.
“This is an extremist, terrorist group that is acting savagely,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said.
Iran’s Shiite government has built closer ties with Iraq since the US withdrew in late 2011.
“For our part, as the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Rouhani said, “we will combat violence, extremism and terrorism in the region and the world.”
After Islamic State fighters seized Tikrit on Wednesday, residents were seen celebrating in the streets, welcoming the insurgent takeover.
During a foreign policy speech in New York on Thursday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the bloodshed in Iraq as a “dreadful, deteriorating situation.”
