are backed by iranians. the white house are saying iranians are directly involved. what does that say to you, ben? this really confirms what we already know is that in addition to iranian advisers more than 100 here in iraq you have suleimani, according to the iranian media he s helping supervise the operation. the iranians are manning artillery batteries, rocket batteries and flying drones over the battlefield as well. keep in mind wolf that we saw the performance of the iraqi army in mosul and tikrit last june. the iranians clearly recognized they needed to step in and in a sense run the show. we don t know to what extent they run the show but they re definitely playing the role of strong adviser providing advice that appears the iraqis are listening very closely to.
they are continuing to push forward. and as you mentioned, it is an important test because some of these troops we believe have been recently trained by the united states and we ll see if they fair any better than the previously u.s.-trained iraqi army that fled from mosul and tikrit last june. ana? ben real quickly, i want to ask you about we re learning of an iranian general who is there in the ground battle with iraqi forces battling isis and given the history of iraq and iran i mean how big of a role is iran playing on the ground there with iraqi military men and women? reporter: it does appear i don t think there are any women fighting in the iraqi army. i suppose not. no. reporter: it does appear this man, sulamani who is the head of the elite army force is on the ground outside tikrit. now, according to the