Iraq ordered on Tuesday the closure of its border with Syria as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is conducting a massive military operation hunting for al-Qaeda and militant hideouts in the country’s western desert.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki has been a strong supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and reports suggestedthat his government was facilitating the transfer of Iranian arms to Syria.
But as Iraq began to feel the spillover of the Syrian violence, with many Jihadists returning back from Syrian well-armed and trained and carrying out deadly attacks across Iraq, Maliki appeared obliged to revise his approach to the crisis in Syria.