It’s best known as Saddam Hussein’s hometown, but Iraqi officials and outside analysts say the strategically located city of Tikrit could play an outsized role in the larger campaign to roll back the Islamic State movement’s stunning gains in Iraq and Syria.
While Iraqi forces backed by Iranian advisers pushed deeper into the city 80 miles north of Baghdad on Thursday, they faced some of the worst urban combat in Iraq since U.S. forces pulled out more than three years ago. Strong resistance from the extremists is expected to intensify in the days ahead.
Iraq’s defense minister said the operation to retake Tikrit is “essential to opening a corridor” for Baghdad-aligned forces to move north toward Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the biggest urban stronghold of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL.
Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi told The Associated Press on Thursday that he expects the ground coalition of Iraqi military troops, police, Sunni tribal fighters and Shiite militias to reach the city’s center by early next week. The battle has shaped up as a key barometer of Baghdad’s willingness to fight after last year’s battlefield debacles.
Although some Iraqi officials have acknowledged the role of Iranian advisers in recent days, Mr. al-Obeidi characterized the Tikrit operation as “100 percent Iraqi, from the air and ground.”
Other Iraqi officials said at least 30,000 men are involved in the offensive and that the forces have come up against sniper fire, suicide car bombs, heavy machine guns and mortars as they close in on Tikrit.
The city, which is the capital of Iraq’s Salahuddin province, sits on the Tigris River and boasts several once-lush palaces of Saddam Hussein. U.S. forces operated out of the palaces after toppling Saddam in 2003, and supporters of the former dictator are believed to have used them to help the Islamic State seize the city last year.
Regional analysts say the strategic importance of the battle to retake Tikrit cannot be understated — militarily and politically.
“Tikrit matters operationally because it could be an attack base for the Baghdad-Mosul line of supply,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who specializes in military and security affairs in the region.
Mr. Knights, in an email interview from Iraq on Thursday, described the battle as an urban combat “test run” for Iraqi Security Forces aiming to eventually retake Mosul. He said it was particularly important for some of Iraq’s Shiite leaders, who are under pressure from the nation’s Shiites to seek retribution against the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group.
Tikrit and its immediate vicinity are seen as essential to such retribution, Mr. Knights said, because Islamic State fighters are thought to have carried out a massacre in June of some 1,700 mainly Shiite Iraqi air force cadets near the city. The cadets were stationed at Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base just north of Tikrit.
Iraq takes the lead
Beyond the sectarian tensions, the retaking of Tikrit may well turn out to be the first clear proof that Baghdad is capable of making serious gains against the Islamic State — and perhaps more important, that such gains can be made without the U.S. military leading the charge.
The Obama administration has consistently touted its efforts to retrain Iraq’s military and inspire the Shiite-dominated government in the Iraqi capital to ally with Sunni tribal fighters. But Washington also has said in recent days that the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State is not carrying out any airstrikes in support of the Tikrit offensive, an absence that may be explained by the prominent role Iran has taken.
There are clear concerns in Washington about the potential implications that Iran’s role may have when it comes to moving Tikrit’s Sunni-majority population of civilians back into their homes once the Islamic State has been driven from the city.
Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers in Washington this week that the offensive is being waged predominantly by some 20,000 Iranian-trained and “somewhat Iranian-equipped” Shiite militia forces.
The militias, known as Popular Mobilization Forces, far outnumber the estimated 3,000 Iraqi military regulars and the roughly 1,000 Sunni tribal fighters involved in the fight, Gen. Dempsey said.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, he said there is no doubt that the collection of fighters will effectively “run ISIL out of Tikrit.”
“The question,” the general said, “is what comes after in terms of their willingness to let Sunni families move back into their neighborhoods, whether they work to restore the basic services that are going to be necessary or whether it results in atrocities and retribution.”
Online postings showed Iraqi forces’ violence in Tikrit, including at least one photo of soldiers posing with the severed head of a presumed enemy fighter.
Supporters of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shiite, are pleading for time to allow the process to work itself out, regardless of the Iranian role.
“We know the problem we all face. We have to work with each other,” said Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to Washington. “We have been doing that. We need time. We need support. But certainly we are on the right track.”
Mr. Faily, speaking Monday on NPR’s “On Point” program, said Tehran and Baghdad share a common enemy in the Islamic State and suggested that concerns over the alliance are overblown.
Noting that the two nations share a border of more than 500 miles, he compared today’s Iranian-Iraqi relationship to that among the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“As much as you have Canada and Mexico next to you, we share concerns and opportunities, and here we share a threat,” Mr. Faily said. “Iran is playing their part. We welcome that, and we welcome everybody’s support.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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