The WSJ reports, "Iraq's government girded to protect the capital from advancing insurgents, as Iranian security officials said their forces had joined the battle on Baghdad's side and the U.S. weighed military assistance, including airstrikes.
Iraq edged closer to all-out sectarian conflict as Kurdish forces took control of a provincial capital in the oil-rich north on Thursday and Sunni militants threatened to march on two cities revered by Shiite Muslims and the capital.
"What we have seen over the last couple of days indicates the degree to which Iraq is going to need more help—more help from us and more help from the international community," President Barack Obama said from the Oval Office. "My team is working around the clock to identify how we can provide the most effective assistance to them," he added. "I don't rule out anything."
The deteriorating situation in Iraq—a key global oil supplier—reverberated through financial markets Thursday, sending oil prices sharply higher, pushing U.S. stocks lower and igniting the latest rally in safe-haven bonds.
Faced with the threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of Iraq's Shiite-dominated rulers, Shiite Iran sprang into action to aid its besieged Arab ally. It deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, Iranian security sources said. At least three battalions of the Quds Forces, the overseas branch of the Guards, were dispatched, the security sources said.
Some U.S. military officials cast doubt on the report that battalions of Iranian Quds Forces had deployed to Iraq, saying only militias controlled by or allied with Iran have been mobilized to fight alongside Iraqi forces.
One Revolutionary Guards unit that was already in Iraq fought alongside the Iraqi army against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda rapidly gaining territory across Iraq, the security sources said.
They offered guerrilla-warfare advice and tactics and helped to reclaim most of the city of Tikrit on Thursday, the security sources said. Two units, dispatched from Iran's western border provinces on Wednesday, were tasked with protecting Baghdad and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, they said.
Gen. Qasem Sulaimani, the commander of the Quds Forces and one of the region's most powerful military figures, traveled to Baghdad this week to help manage the swelling crisis, said a member of the Revolutionary Guards.
With Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government proving incapable of containing the widening strife, Iraq's mosaic of ethnic and religious groups has become combustible, as each is forced to take steps to defend its security. The prime minister's office hasn't responded to repeated requests for comment.
Iraqi officials have signaled they would allow U.S. airstrikes on militants, senior U.S. officials said. Iraqi officials have asked the U.S. to speed delivery of promised military support, particularly Apache helicopters, F-16 fighters and surveillance equipment, to help push back ISIS fighters. The U.S. said it has been expediting shipments of military hardware to the Iraqis all year.
ISIS is capitalizing on a wave of Sunni discontent with the Shiite-dominated governments that have ruled Iraq since Hussein's ouster in 2003.
The group aims to set up a state in a continuous stretch of territory from Sunni-dominated Anbar province in Iraq to Raqqa province in northeast Syria. Since capturing Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, on Tuesday it has advanced south along the Tigris River toward Baghdad.
In another indication of the increasingly sectarian contours of Iraq's turmoil, ISIS on Thursday issued a threat against Baghdad as well as Karbala and Najaf. The latter two cities, along with Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, are considered sacred to Shiites, who make up 60% of Iraq's population.
The threat by ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani came a day after the powerful Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr urged his followers to form military units to defend the two cities.
Before he suspended its operations in 2008, Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army, a militia once estimated to have nearly 60,000 members, played a major role in the country's Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict. That clash was fueled by the political emergence of Shiites, who had been marginalized and persecuted at the hands of Sunnis during Hussein's nearly 25-year rule".
