Iraq's ambassador to the United States warned that other countries, including Iran, will step up to help if America proves unwilling to provide greater military assistance,
The Hill reported.
Ambassador Lukman Faily said the war-torn country’s former enemy Iran has already offered "all the help literally to replace America," but Iraq has turned it down so far, according to The Hill.
Iraq is in danger of being completely overrun by
militant extremists from the Islamic State, which has already captured vast swaths of territory in the embattled country and neighboring Syria.
"Our military, our army and everything else has been partnered with United States. Why would we need to go to the Iranian?" Faily told an audience at the Atlantic Council in Washington, according to The Hill. "But a vacuum is being created. And it will be filled by whoever’s available on the ground. That is the reality of it."
Faily said that members of the Shiite government in Baghdad were concerned that the United States is not fully committed to helping Iraq push back Sunni fighters who are attempting to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The United States has called on Baghdad to make political reforms in the country that will result in more power-sharing with the minority Sunnis.
Although the United States has offered air strikes and military assistance as part of a deal for political changes, Faily said that without a commitment for a stronger show of force, the Iraqi government has little incentive to undertake those reforms.
"We have skeptics who argue that this is really a conscious U.S. strategy for doing very little, that Washington intention is to create preconditions that we probably cannot satisfied, and then move the goalpost, if necessary, to ensure that we do not satisfy them," Faily said.
Faily said the U.S. lack of sincerity is illustrated by the fact that America had agreed to sell Apache attack helicopters and F-16 fighter jets to Iraq in 2011, but the aircraft never arrived, according to The Hill.
"Unfortunately, that delay has already had a direct impact on us," he said, according to The Hill.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.