Iraq Signs Collaboration Deal With Russia, Iran, Syria on ISIS Fight

Agreement compounds U.S.’s declining influence in Middle East

Fighters from the Abbas battalion of the Shiite Popular Mobilisation units march during a military parade in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Sunday. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

By MATT BRADLEY in Beirut and NATHAN HODGE in Moscow

Sept. 27, 2015

Iraq’s military said Sunday it has signed an intelligence and security cooperation deal with Russia, Iran and Syria to fight Islamic State, an agreement that strengthens ties between the four countries amid increasing Russian military involvement in conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

The four nations will “cooperate in collecting information about the terrorist Daesh group,” said Iraq’s Defense Ministry, using the Arabic acronym for the Sunni Muslim extremist group, which has since last summer controlled wide swaths of Iraq includingMosul, its second-largest city.

The deal was prompted in part by “increased Russian concern about the presence of thousands of terrorists from Russia undertaking criminal acts with Daesh,” the ministry said.

It further compounds America’s declining influence in the Middle East, as Russia expands its military presence in the region, primarily in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. At the same time, the U.S.-led international coalition that has been striking Islamic State in Iraq and Syria from the air since last fall is grappling with a series of high-profile setbacks.

Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces lost control of the strategic city of Ramadi to Islamic State in May, and a widely touted campaign to retake Anbar province from the extremists has been stalled for months, despite U.S. support. A three-year, $500 million U.S. program to arm and train moderate rebels to fight Islamic State and other groups in neighboring Syria has all but collapsed.

The deal effectively formalizes years of military collaboration among the four nations.

Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has for years cooperated with Mr. Assad and Shiite-majority Iran in the fight against extremists.

Baghdad has also allowed Russian military transport planes to fly over its airspace to supply Syria with weapons, against the wishes of its American allies. Russia last year sold jet fighters to Iraq’s air force that were used to carry out bombing campaigns against Islamic State, after a promised U.S. shipment was delayed. Baghdad is currently negotiating with Moscow to buy more advanced weaponry.

American officials have accused Iraq’s government of allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to transport weapons to Mr. Assad, a charge Iraq has denied. Iranian-backed militias have also played a leading role in the ground fight against Islamic State in Iraq, often failing to coordinate with U.S. officials.

Moscow has long provided conventional weaponry to the military of Mr. Assad, whose resources have been stretched thin after four years of conflict. But in recent weeks, Russia has deployed new military assets to the country, including tanks and fighter aircraft, in what U.S. officials and analysts see as a possible prelude to direct military action.

The Soviet Union once supplied Warsaw Pact military equipment to Iraq. Following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. also supplied Russian-made hardware, including helicopters, to the Iraqi military.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had informed the leaders of Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia about efforts to coordinate the fight against Islamic State, according to remarks released by the Kremlin on Sunday.

“We are offering cooperation to the countries of the region, and we’re attempting to create a kind of coordination structure,” Mr. Putin said, according to an excerpt of an interview with U.S. broadcaster Charlie Rose also released by the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin said the Kremlin had also informed Washington about its ramped-up activities in the Middle East, saying that U.S. and Russian militaries were in communication with each other.

But the Russian leader reasserted that his country’s forces were currently in Syria to assist in training and equipping the military of Mr. Assad.

“With regard to our…presence in Syria, it’s at present expressed in the delivery of weaponry to the Syrian government, in the training of personnel and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people,” Mr. Putin said in the interview.

The Russian government has in recent days stepped up criticism of the U.S. program to train and equip Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State, an effort that the U.S. military acknowledges has only produced a handful of fighters. Mr. Putin said “only four or five people are fighting with weapons in their hands” out of the handpicked Syrian opposition.

The Russian president added, “There’s only one legitimate army there. That’s the army of Assad, the president of Syria.”

—Ghassan Adnan contributed to this article.

Write to Matt Bradley at matt.bradley@wsj.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com