Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari rejected some media reports that Iran has dispatched military forces to Iraq to fight the militants of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari rejected some media reports that Iran has dispatched military forces to Iraq to fight the militants of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.

"No Iranian militia has been sent to Iraq since Iraq does not need it. Iran is an important neighbor the stability of which is considered as Iraq's stability," he said in a joint press conference with his Canadian counterpart John Baird in Baghdad.

In relevant remarks in August, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif strongly dismissed western media claims about the presence of Iranian forces in Iraq to help the country's government in the fight against terrorists.

"We believe that our Iraqi brothers, including Kurdish and Sunni brothers, are capable of defending themselves and Iraq does not need Iran to defend it," the Iranian foreign minister said in a joint press conference with Zebari in Baghdad and in response to the question if recent media reports on the deployment of Iranian soldiers in Iraq were true.

The US Wall Street Journal in a report in June claimed that Tehran has sent two elite units of its IRGC to Iraq to fight against the ISIL terrorists - an Al-Qaeda offshoot.