Team will help Iraq counteroffensive against insurgent group Isis but Obama indicates US air power will be kept in reserve

Barack Obama announced on Thursday that a contingent up to 300 “military advisers” will be sent to help Iraq's beleaguered army repel the advance of Sunni insurgents, but insisted the US would not be dragged into another bloody war in the country.

The troops, drawn from US special operations forces, will assist the Iraqi military to develop and execute a counter-offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). Their mission is likely to spread to the selection of targets for any future air strikes, but Obama stopped short of accepting a plea from Baghdad to order US air power into the skies over Iraq immediately.

Instead, Obama said the option of air strikes would be held in reserve. Any such strikes would be “targeted” and “precise”, Obama said, warning that the fate of the country “hangs in the balance”.

The fighting continued in Iraq on Friday as Isis militants fought Iraqi troops in an intense battle the at the Baiji oil refinery. The facility, the country's largest, is between the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, both seized by Isis last week. Fighting was also reported for Tal Afar airport, which the militants said they were in control of.

Iraq's most senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, also added his voice to criticism of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, when he called in a statement read to his followers for a new "effective" government.



Mindful of the long shadow cast by the last Iraq war, Obama said the deployment of military advisers, expected to be taken from US special operations forces, would not be drawn into combat. Only Iraq would be able to heal the sectarian divisions ripping the country apart, he said.

“American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again,” he said. “We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq.”

However, he said it was in America's national interest not to see “an all-out civil war in Iraq”, warning that it could become a haven for terrorists.

The lack of reliable intelligence identifying clear targets against Isis, which is embedded in several towns and cities it recently captured in the Sunni-dominated north, is one factor holding the White House back from launching strikes.



The contingent of special forces will train and advise Iraq’s troops, who crumbled in northern Iraq last week in the face of the rapid advance of Sunni militants. They will be deployed in several teams comprised of about a dozen , embedded into “joint operations centres” with the Iraqi military, a concept borrowed from the 2007-2008 US troop surge.

The teams will first be based in Baghdad, primarily at senior-level command centres and then at brigade level, with a focus on assessing what additional support is required by the Iraqi military. Senior administration officials said they might later be based outside the capital in places such as northern Iraq.

Their presence on the ground, and close to the field of battle, is also intended to provide the US with intelligence that could be used to guide any air or missile strikes.



Obama in the Brady Press Briefing Room. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Obama said the US had "significantly increased” its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in areas of Iraq taken by Isis. However, his decision not to authorise immediate air strikes will disappoint the Iraqi government, which has formally requested that the US provide Iraq with the air power it lacks.



The Obama administration has said military involvement by US forces would not involve combat troops, and would be contingent on the Iraqi government making a concerted effort to bridge the sectarian divides threatening the breakup of the country. Two US envoys, ambassadors Robert Beechcroft and senior State Department official Brett McGurk, have been scrambling through Iraq in recent days, reportedly to help broker a new Iraqi political consensus. Obama said he would also send Secretary of State John Kerry to the region.

The White House is also facing pressure from Republican and Democratic hawks in Washington, who are pushing for urgent air strikes to arrest the advance of Isis.



Earlier this week Obama notified Congress up to 275 troops could be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for personnel and the US embassy in Baghdad. However, neither deployment has a combat role.



The US has ruled out – publicly, at least – cooperating militarily with Shia-dominated Iran, which is poised to increase its involvement in the conflict. But Obama said Iran “can play a constructive role” in urging the Iraqi government to move past sectarianism, but should avoid entering the conflict as “solely as an armed force on behalf of the Shia”.



“Iran has heard from us,” he said. “We have indicated to them it is important for them to avoid steps that might encourage the kind of sectarians slips that might lead to civil war.” He warned against Tehran repeating its approach in Syria, where he said Iran entered “hot and heavy on one side”.



While Thursday’s announcement does not return the US military to a leading role in the Iraq crisis, it risks creating pressure to do so should Isis retain momentum. Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said last week that helping break Isis's momentum would be the objective of any prospective US military aid.



In reserve on the deck of the USS George HW Bush are four squadrons of F/A-18 fighter jets, which the Pentagon ordered into the Persian Gulf on Saturday. The advantage of using naval aviators is that they need not require any regional country's permission to fly over foreign territory. Yet senior Pentagon officials warned on Wednesday that the intelligence picture they possess of a rapidly changing Iraqi battlefield still falls short of what is typically necessary for an aerial attack.

US officials would not rule out the prospect of potential bombing campaigns in Syria as well as Iraq, a consideration first reported last week by the Guardian. “We don't restrict a potential US action to a specific geographic space,” said a senior administration official who would not agree to be named.

The US military rebuilt the Iraqi military from scratch, largely in its image, after Washington fatefully opted to disband it in 2003, a catalyst for the bloody insurgency that killed nearly 4,500 US troops. At least 100,000 Iraqi civilians are estimated to have died in the nine-year conflict.



Obama has made ending US involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a hallmark of his foreign policy. He made clear last Friday that America “will not be sending US troops back into combat in Iraq”, signalling his reluctance to getting “dragged back” into a conflict from which he has sought to extricate the US military, withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011.

Thursday's statement was delayed by more than an hour, after the president was involved in protracted deliberations with his national security team – a meeting that included the chairman of the joints chief of staff, Martin Dempsey, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and the director of the CIA, John Brennan, as well as senior cabinet secretaries and White House advisers, lawyers and staff.

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Earlier on Thursday, a spokesman for Maliki said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants, despite a growing chorus in Washington that wants to dump the former US choice for prime minister. "It is not our job to choose Iraq's leaders,” Obama said, when asked if Maliki should step aside.

“But I don’t think there is any secret that, right now at least, there are deep divisions between Sunni, Shia and Kurdish leaders.” He said the White House had told Maliki that “as long as those deep divisions continue or worsen”, the central government would be unable to stem the sectarian crisis.

Still, Obama urged the Iraqis to form a new government, holding out the inducement that “it'll also make it much easier to partner than it is right now”.

While senior officials denied that they sought to oust Maliki or promote a successor, they suggested that the additional US military action desired by Iraq could be contingent on a new and nonsectarian governing coalition.

That call was echoed in London, where prime minister David Cameron said it was not for Britain or western leaders to pick the leaders of Iraq. But he added that whoever led the country now or in the future must behave in a non-sectarian way.



Cameron's remarks are his latest warning that Shia government must reach out to Sunnis and Kurds to form a broader-based government.

Since the crisis began, Maliki has made few of the overtures to Sunnis demanded by the US, focusing instead on stemming the dramatic rout of Iraq’s army but a few thousand militant fighters. The Iraqi prime minister has fired several senior security force commanders over the defeats in the face of Isis and on Wednesday announced that 59 military officers would be prosecuted for abandoning the city of Mosul.



Maliki is now trying to rally volunteer fighters to help defend the country from Isis fighters, who have been advancing toward Baghdad, while his officials have warned the US they do not have the capacity to fend off Isis fighters without support from Washington.

Additional reporting by Dan Roberts in Washington and Patrick Wintour in London