The Iraqi government is tracing the links between the Islamic State of Iraq, which is the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, and Jabhat al-Nusra, which is active in the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
In September 2012, the US State Department categorized Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization. US Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford, who visited Baghdad recently, told Al-Monitor that “Jabhat al-Nusra’s fighters make up less than a third of the fighters opposed to Assad.”