U.S. to prepare a range of options to help Iraqi Security Forces to counter Sunni insurgents 1406141

Obama said assistance for Iraq’s security forces is necessary because of the “significant gains” Sunni fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have made in the past several days, taking over the country’s second-largest city, Mosul, and continuing to push southward toward the Iraqi capital while overrunning Tikrit and several other towns and threatening several of Iraq’s Shiite shrines.

“Iraqi security forces have proven unable to defend a number of cities, which has allowed the terrorists to overrun a part of Iraq’s territory, and this poses a danger to Iraq and its people,” the president said. “And given the nature of these terrorists, it could pose a threat, eventually to American interests as well.”

Obama indicated that any decision on U.S. assistance to Iraq is still at least several days away, would be made in close consultation with Congress, and would have to include Iraq’s leaders working to resolve the sectarian differences that he said underlie the current situation.

“The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together,” he said. The government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi military are largely Shiite, while the insurgents are primarily Sunni.

The United States already has supplied Iraq with military equipment and intelligence. After meetings with his national security council yesterday, Obama decided the United States needed to take action to help, but he said that “ultimately, it’s up to the Iraqis as a sovereign nation to solve their problems.”