BRUSSELS: US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday welcomed any Iranian military action against Islamic State militants in Iraq as “positive” after the Pentagon said Tehran had carried out air strikes against the group.
Kerry, hosting a meeting of an anti-IS coalition in Brussels, said international airstrikes were finally stopping the advance of the militants across Iraq and Syria, but warned it could take years to finally defeat them.
But in a sign of the deepening complexity of the regional conflagration, Syria’s Iranian-backed President Bashar Al Assad criticised the Western and Arab air strikes for having no effect.
Kerry told the meeting of officials from 60 states in the coalition that a campaign of around 1,000 strikes had had a “significant” impact on the Sunni extremist IS, which declared a caliphate in Syria and Iraq in June.AFP
