DISINFO: Iran and Russia defeated ISIS in Iraq while the West supported terror groups
SUMMARY
Iran played a pivotal role in blocking the advancement of ISIS, as they provided advisors and weapons. Russians came to the rescue too, supplying support to the Iraqi government and the Popular Mobilisation Forces militias. The Americans, on the other hand, were the ones who supported terror groups, feeding them with weapons and military equipment.
It is not the first time that the US is stealing victory and changing the narrative. In 2014, the Iraqi government approached the US asking to supply them with the weapons they needed to fight the ISIS insurgency. The Americans agreed but said that the first shipments would only arrive in 2020. When the Iraqis understood Washington‘s terms, they quickly turned to Iran and Russia for help, and they delivered. It was thanks to them that Iraq started to gradually break ISIS. When the Americans realized that the Iraqi forces would soon destroy the group, they joined forces in the final battle of Mosul so that later on, they could claim victory.
RESPONSE
This disinformation story aims to portray Russia and Iran as fighting terrorism while advancing recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the West as a sponsor of terrorism. All the claims are demonstrably false.
The US and other Western nations started supplying weapons for fighters to confront the Islamic State in Iraq as early as August 2014, along with airstrikes which were soon expanded to Syria. The CIA started shipping weapons directly to Kurdish peshmerga forces who were trying to prevent jihadist combatants from advancing into Iraqi Kurdistan after the fall of Mosul. Initially it was difficult to provide weapons to the regular Iraqi army since there was no functioning government in Baghdad at the time, despite US pressure to quickly ensure the power transition to new prime minister Haider Al Abadi. Besides, there were doubts about the capacity of Iraqi soldiers, as they had abandoned US military material worth millions when they fled Mosul in June 2024 without offering significant resistance to ISIS fighters. The so-called Global Coalition against Daesh -which included all Western nations as well as many other partners from 87 different countries and international institutions- was formed as early as September 2014.
It is true that Iran was the first country to deploy forces against the Islamic State in Iraq in June 2014. In contrast, Russia only intervened in Syria in September 2015, and initially focused its efforts on bombing Syrian opposition rebels instead of ISIS positions. There is no record of Russian aid to the Iraqi government or anti-Daesh militias during this period. Russia did not attack Islamic State forces in Iraq, despite calls from Baghdad to do so.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that the West encouraged the creation of the Islamic State, who are its mercenaries; that instead of killing ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the US may have evacuated him; that the US supports the Islamic State while Russia defeated it; or that Russia is the only state in the world that is decisively fighting Daesh.