After Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denied that Iran had sent troops into Iraq, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that advisers had been sent into Iraqi Kurdistan at the request of the Kurdistan Regional Government. At the meeting with provincial officials in Qom, Fazli also related that President Hassan Rouhani had drawn a red line at the fall of Shiite holy cities Karbala and Najaf.

On Aug. 25, Fazli said that when the Islamic State group (IS) "attacked Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdish officials requested help from Iran. And the Islamic Republic, in addition to providing advisers, organized their forces."

On Aug. 24, according to Agence France-Presse, Zarif, while on a trip to Baghdad, had said during a press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari that Iran was “cooperating and working … with the Iraqi government and Kurdish government” to fight IS, adding, “We do not believe that they need the presence of Iranian soldiers in order to do this task.”

At a press conference with Zarif today, Aug. 26, Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani said, “We asked for weapons and Iran was the first country to provide us with weapons.”