Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister on Tuesday refused to confirm whether his country carried out an air strike along the Syrian-Lebanon border, but said he would do everything possible to protect the security of Israeli citizens.

Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his vague answer hours after Lebanon’s state news agency reported that Israeli aircraft carried out two air strikes late Monday. While Israel’s military refused to comment, Israel has carried out similar air strikes in the past on suspected weapons shipments believed to be bound from Syria to Hizbollah fighters in Lebanon.

At a news conference with the visiting German chancellor, Angela Merkel, he said Israel’s policy is not to discuss what others claim it did.

“We do all that is needed to protect the security of Israeli citizens,” he said.

Israel and Hizbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Israeli officials believe Hizbollah has restocked its arsenal with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles, some of which are capable of striking virtually anywhere in Israel.

Although Israel has refrained from taking sides in the Syrian civil war, Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to take action to prevent Hizbollah from obtaining “game changing” weapons from its ally Syria. Past Israeli air strikes are believed to have targeted Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and guided missiles from Iran. Israel has never confirmed the air strikes.

Lebanon’s National News Agency said the air raids took place near Nabi Sheet, a remote village in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. The agency did not say what was targeted in the attack. The porous border is frequently used by fighters and smugglers to move people and weapons between Lebanon and Syria. Hizbollah has a strong presence in the area. Arab media reports said Hizbollah had suffered casualties, though neither the group nor the Lebanese military confirmed an air strike had actually taken place.

Earlier this week, Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, accused Iran, a key backer of Syria and Hizbollah, of “handing out torches to the pyromaniacs”. He spoke during a tour of the Golan Heights, a strategic area near Syria and Lebanon.

“Right now we’re in the Golan Heights and it seems quiet and peaceful. I suggest that everyone keeps in mind that underneath this quiet, a storm is brewing — day, night and in every setting,” Gantz said. “We have very advanced abilities to deal with the security challenges in this region. This comes alongside improving response at the operational level, and acting speedily in every sphere: air, sea, ground, intelligence and all the support systems that work with them.”

Eyal Ben-Reuven, a former deputy head of the Israeli military’s Northern Command, said he doubted Hizbollah would retaliate since it had its hands full fighting the Syrian civil war. Having said that, he said Hizbollah was still a dangerous foe and it was imperative that Israel maintain its ability to operate freely in the skies and in the seas and block any more advanced weapons from reaching Hizbollah.

“Israel has always stayed as the main objective for Hizbollah and Iran,” he said. “A terror organisation gets these kinds of capabilities not for deterrence, but for acts. This is the difference between states and organisation. This is something that we have to keep in our hands to prevent this kind of transfer of game-changing weapons,” he said.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The leaders of Israel and Germany acknowledged Tuesday they don’t see eye to eye on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme as negotiations between Tehran and world powers proceed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes dismantling the programme is the best way to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb. The six world powers negotiating with Tehran, including Germany, have demanded significant cuts in its nuclear programme.

When asked at a press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel if Germany, a key Israeli ally, and the other world powers would accept Netanyahu’s position, he replied “probably not”.

“They talked about the possibility of some enrichment and I think it’s a mistake,” Netanyahu said, seated next to Merkel. “If the world is serious about having Iran with civilian nuclear energy and not having Iran with military nuclear capability, then they don’t need any enrichment, and they don’t need any centrifuges.”

Germany, along with the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, have been pursuing talks meant to roll back Iran’s nuclear programme. They ended their last session with a plan to meet again next month.

Merkel said the current situation was not ideal, but that it was preferred over allowing Iran to continue to charge forward with its programme unchecked.

“Clearly, there is a different way of looking at this, whether these negotiations should be conducted. We have decided to take this path, that enrichment is only taking place at a low level, but enrichment is taking place,” she said.

The talks are designed to build on a first-step deal that commits Iran to initial nuclear curbs in return for some easing of sanctions. The deal can be extended by mutual consent after six months.

Netanyahu has been an outspoken critic of the international negotiations, saying that Iran has been given significant relief while making few concessions of its own.

Israel views Iran’s nuclear programme as an existential threat, citing Iran’s repeated calls for Israel’s destruction, its long-range missile programme and its support for violent anti-Israel groups like the Hizbollah in Lebanon.

Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes.

Merkel and most of her ministers are on a two-day trip to Israel. Germany is Israel’s closest European ally and holds an annual joint Cabinet session with its Israeli counterparts. The meetings highlight the strong bond between Israel and Germany seven decades after the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany killed six million Jews. Germany is also a key Israeli trade partner.

The countries are signing six agreements, including a deal whereby German embassies will offer consular assistance to Israelis in countries where Israel has no embassy of its own and an agreement allowing young Israelis to work in Germany.

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s 2011 famine is over. Militants have been pushed out of Mogadishu. Political progress is being made. And yet the UN and Somali government are pleading with international donors to help a country they say is still in crisis.

Aid groups, pressed to respond to emergency situations in Somalia in recent years, have not been able to put the time or resources into building the country’s systems, the UN’s aid chief for Somalia said Tuesday.

Many in the country remain in dire circumstances.

“We have 50,000 children at the doorstep of death,” because of severe malnourishment, Philippe Lazzarini said.

International donors, squeezed by the continuing crisis in Syria and new emergencies in South Sudan and Central African Republic, have given less money to Somalia.

Donors also have continuing concerns about the theft and corruption of aid money in a country with less effective government oversight of money.

Lazzarini argues that Somalia’s health indicators are even more dire than those in South Sudan or the Central African Republic, two nations getting more headlines in recent months. Somalia, he said, suffers from an aid-giving bias from donors because it has been suffering for so long. In addition, if donor funds drop off now, it could undermine the fledgling state building process, he said.

“While the situation is in no way comparable to the famine, we are still in a situation comparable to just before the famine. We need to be sure people can absorb future shock,” Lazzarini said. “The work is half done. If we stop now the gains will be lost.”

The UN is asking for $933 million for its 2014 Somalia aid operations. It says 2.9 million people need life-saving assistance.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, meanwhile, told journalists on Monday that Somalia needs to see donors who pledged $2.4 billion in assistance at a conference in Brussels last year make good on those promises.

Mohamud’s government faces donor doubts, however, because of persistent corruption. A report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea this month accused the government of diverting arms meant for the military to private militias and even an Al Shabaab commander who could help Mohamud consolidate power in his home region. 

TEHRAN — An Iranian schoolteacher has innovated an amusing way of encouraging young children to say their daily prayers — robotics.

Akbar Rezaie, 27, attended private robotics classes and learned to develop and assemble customised humanoid robots.

He teaches the Koran to boys and girls at Alborz Elementary School in the town of Varamin, 35 kilometres southeast of Tehran.

A Western dancing and singing doll first sparked in his mind the idea of building a local robot to present religious practice to his students.

“Once I was at a family gathering where there was a little girl playing with a doll that could dance and sing. I saw her watching the doll passionately and it made me contemplate on a making a device that can be used for both religious and entertaining purposes,” he told AP Television.

He built the robot at home with basic tools and gave it the designation “Veldan”, a Koranic term meaning: “Youth of Heaven.”

Veldan is a humanoid robot constructed using an educational kit from the Korean robot manufacturer Robotis Bioloid.

By applying some mechanical modifications such as adding two extra engines, Akbar managed to let the robot perform praying movements, such as prostration, more easily.

“It was so exciting to me to see a robot pray. I have decided to always say my prayers too,” said Narges Tajik, a third grader at Alborz School said.

He describes the robot as an educational assistance to teachers and believes that it has so far been successful in attracting students and should be mass-produced.

“As you see the children’s reaction in their faces, you realise how interesting it is to them to see how the science of robotics has been beautifully used for a religious purpose and I am sure it will be greatly effective in teaching them how to pray,” he said.

He has formally registered the robot’s invention patent and its intellectual rights at Iran’s State Organisation for Registration of Deeds and Properties, a body in charge of recognising inventions.

WASHINGTON — The United States pressed Iraq Monday to explain media reports that it had signed a contract to buy arms from Iran, a move forbidden under a United Nations embargo.

“We’ve certainly seen those reports. If true, this would raise serious concerns,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

A deal signed in November in which Iraq would buy $195 million in arms from Iran was reported by Reuters in Baghdad Monday.

Psaki said that “any transfer of arms from Iran to a third country is in direct violation” of the UN embargo.

“We are seeking clarification on this matter from the government of Iraq and to ensure that Iraqi officials understand the limits that international law places on arms trade with Iran,” she added.

The contract with Iran would have been signed just after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki visited Washington requesting American military aid in fighting Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups.

In early January, Iran’s Deputy Chief-of-Staff General Mohammad Hejazi said that his country was ready to provide military equipment and advice to Iraq as it battles Al Qaeda. Maliki payed a visit to Iran one month later.

To help Iraq fight Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups, such as the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Washington has recently promised to speed up its delivery of Hellfire missiles and surveillance drones. The Pentagon is ready to sell more missiles and 24 Apache attack helicopters.

“We certainly view the government of Iraq as a partner in the fight against terrorism and we’re committed to supporting them in this fight,” Psaki said.

She added that the United States has provided more than $15 billion in equipment, services and training to Iraqi armed services and security.

TEHRAN — A senior Iranian military official said Tuesday that the Islamic republic has analysed Israeli strikes during the 2006 war in Lebanon to boost its own defence capabilities against the US and Israel.

Iran sees Israel as its arch-nemesis. Israel fought a 2006 war against Iran’s ally, the Lebanese group Hizbollah. Israel and the US have not ruled out a military option against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Gen. Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads a unit in charge of civil defence, said Iran sent a team to Lebanon to study strikes during the 2006 war and changed its defence plans accordingly.

“After Hizbollah’s 33-day war, we sent a team to Lebanon and probed the models of Israel’s attack on Lebanese buildings and collected 5,000 photos of all the destroyed buildings,” the daily Kayhan quoted Jalali as saying Tuesday.

Jalali said Iranian military officials learned after analysing the package that tall buildings collapsed not because of a bomb’s power, but the engineering technique used to bring it down.

Iran has employed what it calls “passive defence”, measures to minimise the effects of damage caused by attacks.

It has built underground nuclear facilities, such as the Fordo uranium enrichment site, which it says is buried under 90 metres of rock for maximum protection from aerial attack.

Jalali told military officials that Iran has also adopted a new military doctrine to neutralise any possible plans by the US to attack the Islamic republic.

“It took three years to develop the new doctrine to confront the US,” he said. He says the new doctrine made Iran spread out its installations and combat forces to minimise damage in a possible war.

“We changed the deployment of military forces from a mass concentration to managed format,” he said.

HEBRON, Palestinian Territories — Twenty years on, the massacre of 29 Muslims by a Jewish extremist as they prayed in a West Bank mosque still haunts Mohammed Abu Al Halawa, a survivor who was left a paraplegic.

On February 25, 1994, Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein used an assault rifle to gun down worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque — revered by Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs — in the heart of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, before he was beaten to death by those who escaped his hail of bullets.

Abu Al Halawa, 53, resides a mere 400 metres from Goldstein’s grave in the Kiryat Abra settlement where he had lived, adjoining Hebron’s old city.

“I remember the massacre at every moment and am physically still affected by it — it paralysed me for life, and I’m still in a lot of pain and need regular medical treatment,” he said from his wheelchair.

“It pains me whenever I see settlers dancing next to the grave of the criminal who left me disabled,” he added, bitter that his attacker was still honoured by some extremists.

And with a physical disability, the draconian security measures and checkpoints imposed by the occupying Israeli army on Hebron following the massacre are all the more arduous for Abu Al Halawa.

Hebron’s main street was partially closed to Palestinians after the massacre, and six years later, at the outset of the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, the army declared it a “closed military zone”, restricting Palestinian access to residents of the immediate area — and then on foot only.

Palestinians held a protest last Friday to demand Shuhada Street be reopened, and an exchange of stone-throwing by some demonstrators and rubber bullets and tear gas by police left a dozen demonstrators injured.

The occupation is felt as strongly as ever today around the site of the 1994 massacre, and the security measures have put many worshippers off praying at the historic site.

Electronic gates, airport-style security and searches by soldiers of those heading to the Ibrahimi Mosque detract from any feeling of reverence, and the number of Muslims going to pray has diminished, according to local religious officials.

Adel Idris, who was the mosque’s imam on the day of the massacre, remembers it vividly.

“I’ll never forget what happened. Every day that I enter the shrine to pray I get flashbacks of the scene — the criminal opening fire, the roar of the gun and screams of worshippers... that was an indescribably awful moment,” he said.

Worship at the flashpoint site is split between the two faiths, with an area for Jewish visitors and one for Muslims.

The director of Hebron’s Islamic religious affairs, Taysir Abu Sneineh, said that “entering the mosque to pray has become much more difficult since the massacre”.

“They [the Israeli army] are punishing the victims!”

Goldstein was a member of a banned racist group, which advocates the forcible expulsion of all Arabs from the biblical “Greater Israel”.

The flashpoint city of Hebron, home to nearly 200,000 Palestinians, also comprises some 80 settler housing units in the centre of town housing about 700 Jews who live under Israeli army protection.

AMMAN — Air raids on rebel-held towns across Syria killed 26 people on Monday, activists said, two days after the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an end to indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks.

Syria’s almost three-year-old conflict has raged on despite peace talks that began in Geneva last month and the passage of the UN resolution, a rare moment of unity between the West and Russia, President Bashar Assad’s strongest backer.

Two women and 10 children were among the dead in government air raids on the town of Al Neshabieh, in the eastern outskirts of Damascus, near a railway marking the frontline between Islamist fighters and Assad’s forces backed by Lebanese Hizbollah militants, and in the province of Homs to the north.

“Two simultaneous raids hit Neshabieh first. People were pulling the bodies of a women and her two children from one house when the planes came back and hit the crowed, killing another nine,” activist Abu Sakr told Reuters from the area.

He said artillery fire from a battalion based at Damascus airport and the nearby town of Mleiha then hit the town. Fifty people were wounded in the combined bombardment, he said.

Photos taken by activists, purportedly at a field hospital in the area, showed a girl’s body covered in a white shroud, and the decapitated bodies of several men. Reuters could not independently verify the pictures.

In Homs province, activists reported air raids on Al Hosn, a Sunni town near the Crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers in a valley mostly inhabited by Christians, who have mostly stayed on the sidelines in the conflict between Assad and rebels.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, a grass-roots opposition group, said six people were killed in the attack on Al Hosn. Footage showed the bodies of two people amid the rubble, one of whom was identified as a woman.

In the town of Talbiseh, on Syria’s main north-south highway, opposition activists said an air raid killed four children. Footage showed relatives gathered around the bodies, which were wrapped in white and laid on a tiled floor. One man was shown holding the bloodied head of one child and weeping.

On Saturday, Russia and China voted with Western powers for a UN resolution that calls for access for humanitarian aid in Syria and threatens “further steps” in case of non-compliance.

The initial text was weakened during negotiations, with references to the International Criminal Court and targeted sanctions removed. But a call for an end to shelling and air raids in populated areas, a demand for cross-border humanitarian access and the naming of besieged areas were included.

The resolution also condemned “terrorist” attacks by Al Qaeda affiliated groups, which have emerged as some of the most formidable anti-Assad groups, and specifically referred to the Syrian military’s use of barrel bombs, which human rights groups say are indiscriminate weapons that mainly target civilians.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based pro-opposition monitoring group, said four children had been killed on Monday by barrel bombs that hit the contested northern city of Aleppo, scene of heavy fighting in the last two days.

In Damascus, security forces released leftist dissident Akram Al Bunni after abducting him in the city centre on Saturday and questioning him about recent articles he had written on politics in Syria, his brother Anwar said.

Bunni spent 20 years as a political prisoner under the rule of Assad and his late father Hafez Assad.

CAIRO — Egypt’s military-installed government resigned en masse Monday in a surprise move ahead of a presidential poll likely to bring defence minister and army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to power.

A limited reshuffle to allow Sisi to step down as defence minister and enter elections had been expected, but the en masse resignations led by the increasingly unpopular Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi surprised even some in the Cabinet.

Appointed in July after the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, Beblawi’s government came under pressure to step aside amid a worsening economy and a spate of militant attacks and labour strikes.

The resignations might lead to a new Cabinet without the baggage of Beblawi’s government ahead of Sisi’s expected run in the presidential election this spring.

Sisi, who emerged as the country’s most popular political figure after ending Morsi’s divisive one-year rule, has not yet announced his candidacy, but aides say he has already decided to run and will make the announcement soon.

The field marshal, who is the defence minister and first deputy prime minister in the outgoing Cabinet, has to resign from the government and the army before he can officially announce his candidacy.

Beblawi defended the government’s performance in an address announcing the resignations.

“The government assumed its responsibilities and duties... the government did not spare any efforts to get Egypt out of a bad phase,” Beblawi said in reference to the security and economic problems.

“This is not the time for personal interests. The nation is above everybody.”

The Cabinet said in a statement it resigned “in light of the current situation that the country is going through”.

The mass resignations could have been triggered by the pressure on Beblawi himself to step down.

“If the prime minister resigns, then the whole Cabinet resigns,” Mustapha Kamel Al Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University, said.

The resignations could also work in Sisi’s favour, he added.

“If Field Marshal Sisi decides to run, he would like to run with a government that has a good reputation and can help him by resolving some of the urgent problems faced by the people.”

Beblawi said his government would remain in a caretaker role until the interim president signs off on the resignations, the official MENA news agency reported.

Government spokesman Hany Saleh told AFP that Monday’s decision was taken because there was a “feeling that new blood is needed”.

The government’s resignation came as Hamdeen Sabbahi, a prominent candidate for the election, told AFP he fears a return to autocracy in Egypt three years after its Arab Spring uprising.

While his chances of winning against Sisi are seen as slim, Sabbahi said he was urged to run by the young people who led the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak.

They “feel that their revolution was being stolen... as their comrades were being jailed and some killed before their eyes,” he said in an interview.

In the more than seven months since Morsi’s overthrow, Egypt has been battered by protests and militant attacks that have damaged its vital tourism industry and scared off investors.

Beblawi’s government has announced two stimulus packages funded by Arab Gulf states but still faces accusations of incompetence, even by many Sisi supporters.

The expansion of the crackdown on Morsi’s supporters to more secular activists has also alienated some who supported the overthrow last year of Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.

BAGHDAD — Iran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195 million, according to documents seen by Reuters — a move that would break a UN embargo on weapons sales by Tehran.

The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri Maliki returned from Washington, where he lobbied the Obama administration for extra weapons to fight Al Qaeda-linked militants.

Some in Washington are nervous about providing sensitive US military equipment to a country they worry is becoming too close to Iran. Several Iraqi lawmakers said Maliki had made the deal because he was fed up with delays to US arms deliveries.

A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister would not confirm or deny the sale, but said such a deal would be understandable given Iraq’s current security troubles.

“We are launching a war against terrorism and we want to win this war. Nothing prevents us from buying arms and ammunition from any party and it’s only ammunition helping us to fight terrorists,” said the spokesman, Ali Mussawi.

The Iranian government denied any knowledge of a deal to sell arms to Iraq. It would be the first official arms deal between Shiite Iran and Iraq’s Shiite-led government and highlight the growing bond between them in the two years since the departure of US troops from Iraq.

One US official, told of Reuters’ findings, said such a deal could further complicate Washington’s approach to negotiating with Iran on easing international sanctions over its nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at producing bombs. Iran says its aims are purely peaceful.

“If true, this would raise serious concerns,” said the US official, who declined to be named. “Any transfer of arms from Iran to a third country is in direct violation of Iran’s obligations under UNSCR 1747.”

A UN diplomatic source close to the UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee was aware of the Iran-Iraq arms deal and voiced concern about it, while declining to disclose details about those concerns. The source spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Political significance

The official documents seen by Reuters showed that six of eight contracts were signed with Iran’s Defence Industries Organisation to supply Iraq with light and medium arms, mortar launchers, ammunition for tanks as well as artillery and mortars.

A final two contracts were agreed to with the state-owned Iran Electronic Industries for night vision goggles, communications equipment and mortar guiding devices.

One of the contracts includes equipment to protect against chemical agents. An Iraqi army major with knowledge of procurement issues said that would include items such as gas masks and gloves, as well as injections. Baghdad has expressed fear the militants will use such agents against its forces.

Officials from the Iraqi and Iranian defence ministries signed the agreements, according to the documents. They did not list a timetable for deliveries and it was not possible to confirm whether they had taken place.

Maliki is engaged in a nearly two-month-old battle in western Iraq against Sunni Al Qaeda-inspired militants and rebellious tribesmen. The prime minister has blamed the unrest in Anbar on the conflict spilling over from neighbouring Syria.

One Western security official said US government experts believed an Iranian-Iraqi arms deal had been in the works for some time. The growing friendship between the two countries is discomfiting for the United States, which has accused Iran of having shipped arms to the Syrian government through Iraq.

Iran already supplies Baghdad with electricity and gas and reiterated an offer of military assistance in January.

The weapons purchases amount to a drop in the ocean for Iraq, which receives most of its arms from the United States and has also bought weapons and helicopters from Russia and other countries.

But they are politically significant as Maliki purses a third term in office.

Iraqi politicians consider Iran’s blessing as a necessity for seeking power. Maliki won his second term in 2010 only after the Iranians exerted pressure on recalcitrant Shiite parties on his behalf.

Many Iraqis accuse Iran of funding Iraqi Shiite militias who have seen a resurgence in the last two years as Iraq’s security has deteriorated.

Images of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei now decorate posters seen around Baghdad of Iraqi Shiite fighters slain fighting in Syria.

“We have here a political and not a military deal,” said Amman-based Iraq analyst Yahya Al Kubaisay from the Iraqi Centre for Strategic Studies, a think tank filled with political opponents of the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

“On one hand it is aimed at financing Iran, which is desperately in need of dollars, and on the other it is clearly aimed at winning Tehran’s support for Maliki’s third term.”

Maliki’s message

Three Iraqi lawmakers, who said they had knowledge of the deals, argued they were due to Maliki’s unhappiness with Washington’s response to his request to supply Iraq with arms and ammunition to fight militant groups during his visit late last year. Iraq has long complained the timetable for US weapons and aircraft delivery was too slow.

“The Americans were obviously dragging their feet from implementing the arms deals signed with Baghdad and under different pretexts, and that was a reason to get urgent shipments from Tehran,” said one of the lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The US government in recent months has delivered Hellfire missiles and surveillance drones to Iraq as part of its long-standing relationship with Baghdad, which it invaded in 2003. It has also supplied Iraq with M1 Abrams tanks and is in process of delivering F-16 fighter jets.

Since fighting broke out in western Anbar in January, Washington has pushed to move ahead with the sale of 24 Apache attack helicopters to Iraq, which had been held up for months due to the concerns of US lawmakers about how Maliki, who is increasingly at odds with minority Sunnis, would use them.

A Shiite lawmaker close to Maliki said the deal with Iran sent a message to Washington that threatening to withhold or delay arms purchases would no longer work.

“If you went to a shop to buy a toy and they refused to sell it to you, then as long as you have the cash, you can get it from the shop next door. It’s as simple as that,” said the official, who also asked to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of the issue.

A senior Iraq army officer said Iran was the best source for quick shipments as some of the arms used by the Iraqi army are similar to those manufactured by Tehran, including assault weapons, mortars, artillery and tank ammunition. Iran even produces ammunition for US-made M-12 assault rifles, used by the Iraqi military.

Maliki defended Iraq’s counterterrorism strategy last week in an editorial published on the website of US journal for international affairs Foreign Policy: “Thanks to our rapidly growing economy, we are able and willing to pay for all the military equipment we need,” he wrote.

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at University of Tehran, told Reuters he had no knowledge of an arms deal with Iraq, but that Iran would not be troubled by the idea: “Iranians don’t accept the legitimacy of sanctions. Plus, Iran sells military equipment to many countries.”

The eight contracts signed with Iran are as follows:

— Ammunition for light and medium weapons: $75 million

— Ammunition for tanks artillery and mortars: $57.178 million

— Light and medium weapons and mortar launchers: $25.436 million

— Artillery ammunition type 155 mm: $16.375 million

— Day and night vision goggles and mortar guiding devices: $7.320 million

— Protective equipment against chemical agents: $6.676 million

— Communications equipment: $3.795 million

— M12 USA ammunition 20 X 102 mm: $3 million