Arab allies took lead role in airstrikes on oil refineries

Arab allies were responsible for the majority of airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group’s oil refineries on Wednesday, flying more warplanes and dropping more bombs than U.S. aircraft, a Pentagon official said.

Arab nations’ military involvement in the mission has been crucial for the Obama administration, which wants to avoid accusations it was again intervening in the Middle East in the face of Arab opposition.

Fighter jets and drones belonging to the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates dropped bombs on a dozen oil refineries in eastern Syria Wednesday in an attempt to begin dismantling the financial bulwark that has made Islamic State one of the world’s wealthiest terrorist groups.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE flew 16 fighter jets in the air campaign and dropped 23 bombs, which represented 80% of the tonnage dropped on the targets, U.S. officials said.

“Largely that comes from the fact that the bombs they were dropping were of greater weight,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a Thursday news briefing, adding that six American aircraft dropped 18 bombs.

U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of the operation against Islamic State, said the small-scale refineries targeted were estimated to produce up to 500 barrels of refined petroleum per day, and helped bankroll the Islamic State’s continued attacks throughout Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State group of Sunni extremists controls considerable oil-producing regions in Syria. Intelligence officials say that the oil is often sold at rebated prices on the black market to traders, businessmen and smugglers through porous borders across northern Syria and western Iraq. Pentagon officials estimate that the militants generated up to $2 million a day off such oil refineries.

The refineries hit were located near the eastern Syrian towns of Mayadin, Hasakah and Abu Kamal.

Assessments were still being made, Kirby said, but the militants are “not going to be using these refineries for some time.”

However, “it wasn’t about obliterating the refineries off the face of the map, it was about degrading their ability to use these refineries ...,” he said. “Assuming that Syria gets to a point where it’s better governed, you know, we’d like to preserve the flexibility for those refineries to still continue to contribute to a stable economy ... when the Assad regime is not in control anymore.”

The air assault on the remote oil facilities marked a further escalation of the bombing campaign launched by the U.S. and its five Arab partners: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Qatar.

Until the strikes on the refineries, the campaign had focused around military targets in Iraq and Syria, including vehicles, personnel and buildings.

The U.S. military said it continued those attacks Wednesday and Thursday, conducting 11 airstrikes that hit a variety of targets in Iraq, near Irbil, Kirkuk and Baghdad.

Meanwhile, foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrial nations and the European Union condemned Islamic State on Thursday, saying the militant organization “negates basic Islamic and human values and poses a deadly threat to Iraq and Syria, the broader Middle East and beyond.”

The condemnation, issued on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, was something of a consolation prize for President Obama. He had chosen not to seek a resolution from the U.N. Security Council supporting the use of force in Syria, which would have faced an almost-certain veto from Russia.

The Security Council did vote Wednesday to crack down on international travel by people who go to Iraq and Syria to join militant groups.

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