breached by, i understand, five syrian regime vehicles. what happened? hi, brooke. let me walk you through it. you know, a very rare air strike in this area. why is it so important? because these malicious groups were pro-regime but shia militias backed by iran. they were moving in on an area in southeastern syria where the u.s. special forces have operated very frequently trying to train syrian opposition. so you have these iranian-backed militias coming down the road, tanks, bulldozers, front-end loader vehicles and they don t get the hint that they are not supposed to be moving against this base where there s opposition and very likely u.s. and other coalition special forces. there was sort of a show of force. aircraft fly over, trying to push them back, they don t get the message, they keep coming. so u.s. aircraft then rolled in and dropped a couple of bombs,
because iraqis are asking for them. they have to have the intelligence in u.s. channels that indicates its a valid isis target. a lot of concern about civilian casualties. and the other thing is they are only going to strike targets and only support the units that are in support of the central government of iraq. so the shia militias backed by iran the sunni tribes that may be out there, all of these other units that may be out there fighting. the u.s. view is they have to come under the control of the iraqi government and then the u.s. can provide support to them. it s a really complicated patchwork out there. it may take time to see how it sorts out. the pentagon not backing off what defense secretary ash carter told cnn over the weekend. a lot of concern about the will to fight in ramadi and its centers all around the command structure in iraq. are those iraqi commanders really going to be able to support their own troops?
have a pro and a con approach to iran at the same time. we seem to be trying to constrain and help them. the dominant thing we re trying to do with iran is to lock down the nuclear program in the diplomatic negotiations secretary kerry is leading right now. but the playing field in the middle east, as iman very smartly sort of outlined there is tremendously complicated, and even in the operation in tikrit what you see happening are is the shia militias backed by iran. they ve pulled back a little bit in protest of the u.s. strikes. and this has happened over the last day or so. and one o f the militias threatened to shoot at u.s. planes. and so it shows you how complicated, even in the places where it seems like we may be leaning or lining towards iran and frankly, i think the the u.s. has had this very red sent approach.
foothold in tikrit. what is iran s angle in all of this? so we ll bring up a map of iraq. in tikrit you have isis which has controlled the northwestern part of iraq for several months now. ful they are now coming under attack by both the u.s. coalition, the international coalition and u.s. air strikes, but on the ground the troops that are actually fighting on the ground are shia militias backed by iran as well as the army. on one hand you have the united states stopping or fighting against or helping support arab countries, fighting against those militias in yemen, but in iraq, you have the united states carrying out air strikes that are also helping those shia militias backed by iran. it s an irony in two different countries. stay with me. i want to bring in national security policy in the middle east and south asia from cap. the center for american progress. and aman is going to continue to give us more insight here. brian, this is a complicated but, it would seem that even if p
the mindset within the pentagon among the war planners is for what is going on here? mike, i can tell you among the war planners just last week i heard for the first time that they are not optimistic but they are pesz pessimistic about the long term future there in iraq particularly because of the growing involvement by those shia militias backed by iran. here is one of the most disconcerting thing of the war planners here in the pentagon war fighters, too, is that so far we have seen no moderate sunnis join the effort against isis there in iraq. and they claim that this war against isis can never be won without participation by moderate sunnis. and they re hedging their bets they don t see an optimistic outcome to, this either particularly with the involve growing involvement of iran