The US moved closer Monday to launching air strikes to stop rampaging al Qaeda-linked jihadis from overwhelming Iraq – and was even looking to team up with longtime arch enemy Iran to quell the crisis, US officials said.
“When you have people murdering, assassinating in these mass massacres, you have to stop that and you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with Yahoo! News.
“[Air strikes] are not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important to be able to stem the tide and stop the movement of people who are moving around in open convoys and trucks and terrorizing people,” Kerry said.
“There is no doubt that the militants are focused on doing harm not just in Iraq and Syria but also in the US and in Europe.”
Asked about military cooperation with Iran, Kerry said he would “not rule out anything that would be constructive,” but said the US remained cautious and would deal “step by step” with the Shiite-dominated theocracy in the fight against the bloodthirsty Suuni extremists.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki later clarified on Twitter that the US is open to a “political conversation” with Iran, “not military cooperation.”
“We are open to talking with Iran. We are not talking about coordinating military action with Iran,” she added during a briefing later at the State Department.
Pentagon Rear Adm. John Kirby also pushed back on any suggestion the US would coordinate militarily with Iran.
“We have no intention to coordinate military activities with Iran. No plans to have consultations with Iran about military activities in Iraq,” Kirby said. “There is no joint military operation with Iran.”
But some Republicans went ballistic at the idea, including US Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz).
“It would be the height of folly to believe that the Iranian regime can be our partner in managing the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. This is the same Iranian regime that … has sponsored acts of terrorism throughout the Middle East and the world, and that continues to use Iraq’s territory and airspace to send weapons and fighters to prop up [President] Bashar al-Assad in Syria,” McCain said.
“Greater Iranian intervention would only make the situation dramatically worse.”
But American and Iranian diplomats were meeting in Vienna Monday to begin more talks aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program, and there was a possibility that Iraq would also be on the agenda.
The commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, was already in Iraq, inspecting Iraqi defenses and reviewing plans with top commanders and Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite militias, officials said.
Meanwhile, the rebels continued to gain ground Monday, and the US moved more military might into the region for possible evacuations of US citizens.
The Sunni militants – fighting as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – captured Tal Afar, a key city along a highway to Syria, moving closer to their goal of establishing a caliphate including territory from both countries that would be ruled under harsh Sharia law.
Abdulal Abbas, the local governor, said that Tal Afar was dealing with “martyrs, wounded, chaos and refugees,” and that some 200,000 people, nearly half the local population, had fled, The Times of London reported.
The gains come as Iranian-backed Shiite militias and thousands of volunteers joined security forces to prepare for what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed to be a fight to liberate every inch of Iraqi territory.
US Navy officials said the USS Mesa Verde was moving into the Persian Gulf with about 500 Marines on board, joining the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush, the USS Philippines Sea, a cruiser, and the USS Truxton, a destroyer.
The Mesa Verde carries Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, capable of vertical take-offs and landings.
Kirby said the muscular presence provide “the commander-in-chief additional options to protect American citizens and interests in Iraq, should he choose to use them.”
A senior American military official also told Fox News that the US is sending nearly 100 troops to the US Embassy in Baghdad to beef up security.
The embassy remains open, but the State Department already has started to “temporarily” send some staff to other consulate locations in Iraq. Psaki would not provide the number of those evacuated or who remain.
The capture of Tal Afar came amid fears of atrocities after the Sunni militants posted graphic photos over the weekend that they said showed fighters massacring as many as 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday that the reports of Islamic militants massacring Iraqi soldiers were “deeply disturbing” and warned against sectarian rhetoric that could inflame the conflict.
The massacre was “almost certainly” a war crimes, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said Monday.
Pillay condemned the reported bloodbath, calling it the “cold-blooded executions of hundreds of Iraqi hors de combat soldiers, as well as civilians including religious leaders and people associated with the government.”
Also Monday, Iraqi Christians sought to escape the violence by fleeing to the ancient mountainside city of Alqosh, a place that has offered them refuge during past conflicts.
This time, however, many said they would stay for good instead of returning to their homes.
“I’m not going back,” said Lina, who fled Mosul with her family as the militants swept in and came to Alqosh, about 31 miles north of the country’s second most-populous city.
“Each day we went to bed in fear,” the 57-year-old woman said, sitting in a house for displaced people. “In our own houses we knew no rest.”
Meanwhile, battle-hardened Kurdish troops have also pushed outside their semi-autonomous stronghold in northern Iraq to protect the nation’s fourth-biggest oilfield from Islamist militants, taking control of a deposit claimed by the central government.
More than 100,000 Kurdish fighters, known as pershmergas, are guarding a “front line” from Iraq’s eastern border with Iran to the northern town of Fishkabur near Turkey, Jabbar Yawar, Peshmerga Ministry secretary-general, said in an interview in Irbil, the Kurdish region’s capital. They now occupy areas around the contested city of Kirkuk.
Iraq’s army abandoned Kirkuk last week amid an offensive by the militants.
Peshmergas now control all energy facilities and oil deposits in the Kirkuk area other than a huge refinery in Baiji, 50 miles to the southwest, which ISIS forces have surrounded, Yawar said.
“Currently all disputed areas are inside the Kurdistan region or protected by the region’s forces,” Yawar said. “It is not possible that the Iraqi government return and fill these huge areas that it left.”