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 A senior Iranian official denied that Iran had launched any such
air strikes.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United
States had indications that Iran had used F-4 Phantoms to launch the
raids in the last several days.
An Iraqi security expert said the strikes took place 10 days ago
near the Iranian border.
"It is true that Iranian planes hit some targets in Diyala. Of
course the government denies it because they have no radars," Hisham
al-Hashemi told Reuters.
Diyala is an ethnically mixed province, where the Iraqi army, backed
by Kurdish Peshmerga and Shi’ite militias, last month drove Islamic
State out of several towns and villages.
A British-based analyst said footage on Al Jazeera of an F-4 Phantom
striking Islamic State in Diyala was the first visual evidence of
direct Iranian air force involvement in the conflict.
"Iran and Turkey are the only regional operators of the F-4, and
with the location of the incident not far from the Iranian border
and Turkey's unwillingness to get involved in the conflict
militarily, indicators point to this being an Islamic Republic of
Iran Air Force aircraft," said Gareth Jennings of IHS Jane’s Defence
Weekly.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby told a news briefing on
Tuesday the United States was not coordinating its military
activities with Iran and added that it was up to the Iraqis to
manage Iraqi air space.
“It's the Iraqi air space and (Iraq’s) to deconflict. We are not
coordinating with nor are we deconflicting with Iranian military,”
Kirby said. Deconflict in military parlance means to avoid overlap.
The prospect of U.S. and Iranian militaries separately carrying out
air strikes in the same country raises questions about the degree of
advanced coordination that might be needed, even indirectly, to
avoid a mishap.
A senior Iranian official said no raids had been carried out and
Tehran had no intention of cooperating with Washington.
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"Iran has never been involved in any air strikes against Daesh
(Islamic State) targets in Iraq. Any cooperation in such strikes
with America is also out of question for Iran," the senior official
said on condition of anonymity.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, in Brussels for a meeting of
the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, said he was not aware
of any Iranian air strikes.
While Shi'ite Iran and the United States have been at odds for
decades, they have a common enemy in Islamic State, the hardline
Sunni group that has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria.
Iran backs the Iraqi Shi'ite militias which are battling Islamic
State and has sent senior commanders to help advise the Iraqi army
and militia operations since the group seized large parts of
northern Iraq in the summer. Iraqi officials say there are no
Iranian troops on its soil.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S.-led coalition had
inflicted serious damage on Islamic State, carrying out around 1,000
air strikes so far in Iraq and Syria, but the fight against the
militants could last years.
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Lesley Wroughton, Raheem
Salman and Dominic Evans; Editing by Alison Williams and Giles
Elgood)
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