Dunford’s comments mostly didn’t read like this was a conclusive position of the Iraqi government at any rate, but more wishful thinking and politicking by the Pentagon, centering on how great an ally the US is to Iraq and how Iraq would be risking that if they dared accept help from Russia.

So far, Abadi hasn’t made any new comments one way or another, though the nation has already accepted some help from Russia on the intelligence-sharing end of things, and the US dramatically scaled back their own such program with Iraq to “punish” them, suggesting Iraq may be leaning more heavily toward Russia.