Ambassador: Iraq Looking to Buy Arms from Iran

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Together with multi-billion dollar arms purchases from the United States and Russia, Iraq’s ambassador to Tehran said that Baghdad has also signed an arms agreement with its eastern neighbor, Iran.

 “Iraq has signed an agreement with Iran to purchase weapons and military equipment because Iraq's defense ministry trusts the effectiveness of the Iranian weapons,” Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh, told the Iranian Tasnim news agency.

"It’s crucial for the Iraqi army to receive a part of its weapons from arms produced in Iran," he added.

In September 2013, Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen defense and security agreements with Iran. The previous Iranian government also offered a comprehensive military and security package in 2012, without concluding the agreement.

On the regional level, the Shiite governments in Baghdad and Tehran have also worked closely to counter the Sunni ascendency in the region by assisting the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria through lethal and nonlethal aid.

Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Lukman Faily, said on his Twitter account that the US Congress had approved a deal to sell Apache helicopters and Hellfire missiles to Iraq.

“We heard great news from Congress: Approval for the Apache helicopters and the new order of Hellfire missile sales to Iraq,” he said in a Tweet late last month.

The delivery of the US weapons, expected to occur in the coming months, includes 24 Apache helicopters and 500 Hellfire missiles, at a cost of $6 billion.

Faily also said that another deal for F-16 fighter jets from the United States is on schedule, and that Iraqi pilots are being trained to fly them.

Fearing that US weapons could be used by the Shiite-led government against Iraq’s large and largely disgruntled Sunni minority, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Salih Mutlaq asked the US administration to halt weapons sales to the government in Baghdad.

According to reports Mutlaq, a secular Sunni, also hired an influential lobbyist to stop the delivery of the US weapons to Baghdad.

Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani has also expressed deep concerns numerous times about the sale of the US weapons to Iraq. The Kurds and Sunnis both accuse the Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of increasingly authoritarian rule.