In recent days, Iran conducted air strikes against Islamic State targets in eastern Iraq, however the strikes were not coordinated with U.S. forces, said a Pentagon spokesman on Wednesday. Iranian officials denied that such strikes occurred.
"We have indications that they did indeed fly airstrikes with F-4 Phantoms in the past several days," Rear Adm. John Kirby told AFP.
Kirby added that the strikes may be the first of their kind.
However, a senior Iranian official commenting anonymously denied that it had launched any such strikes.
"Iran has never been involved in any air strikes against Daesh [Islamic State] targets in Iraq. Any cooperation in such strikes with America is also out of question for Iran," reported Reuters. "We provide military support and advice in the context of international rules."
U.S. officials, who spoke under the conditions of anonymity, said the U.S. has reason to believe that Iran used F-4 Phantoms to launch attacks against the Islamic State in Diyala near the Iranian border over the last several days.
An Iraqi security expert, Hisham al-Hashemi, told a slightly different story, claiming that the strikes did indeed happen, but occurred 10 days ago.
"It is true that Iranian planes hit some targets in Diyala. Of course the government denies it because they have no radars," said al-Hashemi.
Video footage of F-4's striking its targets was played on the Al Jazeera TV station, and being that Iran and Turkey are the only operators of that model plane in the area, and being that Turkey is unwilling to get militarily involved in the conflict, it seems likely that it was an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force aircraft, British-based analyst Gareth Jennings of IHS Jane's Defence Weekly told Reuters.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declined to either confirm or deny if the incident occurred.
Kerry said in September that Iran assisting in the fight against the Islamic State would "not be appropriate," and "would not be right for any number of reasons," reported RT.
Following the news, White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated that the U.S. will not cooperate with Iran in the fight against the Islamic State.
"At this point our calculation about the wisdom of cooperating with the Iranians hasn't changed. We're not going to do it," Earnest said.
