Iran confirms air strikes against Islamic State

Iran has carried out air strikes against Islamic State militants in neighbouring Iraq, a senior Iranian official confirmed with Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Iranian deputy foreign minister Ebrahim Rahimpour said that the air strikes were carried out at the request of Iraq’s central government but not in coordination with the United States, which is also carrying out air strikes against Islamic State targets.

“[The air strikes] were carried out to defend our friends in Iraq,” Rahimpour said, defining such ‘friends’ as the Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, both enemies of Islamic State.

“We did not have any coordination with the Americas. We have coordinated only with the Iraqi government,” Rahimpour told the Guardian. “In general, every military operation to help the Iraqi government is according to their requests. We will not allow conditions in Iraq to descend to the level of Syria, which has been created by foreign players. And certainly our assistance [to Iraq] is stronger than our assistance to Syria, because they are nearer to us.”

However, Rahimpour insisted that Iran did not have any ground troops in Iraq.

"This is only an advisory presence. There is no need to send Iranian troops to Iraq. There are sufficient Iraqi and Kurdish troops there," he said, adding that he did not know how many Iranian advisers were currently in Iraq.

Rahimpour said that western government should start supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,a  longtime Iranian ally, if they wish to see Islamic State weakened in the region. He accused Turkey and Saudi Arabia of supporting IS as an alternative Syrian government and said that western governments were starting to see the logic of Iran’s foreign policy in the region.