Jlulne 20, 2014

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Thursday that he would deploy up to 300 military advisers to Iraq to help its struggling security forces fend off a wave of Sunni militants who have overrun large parts of the country, edging the United States back into a conflict that Mr. Obama once thought he had left behind.

Warning that the militants pose a threat not just to Iraq but also to the United States, Mr. Obama said he was prepared to take “targeted and precise military action,” a campaign of airstrikes that a senior administration official said could be extended into neighboring Syria.

Mr. Obama’s calibrated military moves — coupled with his pointed warning to Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to quell his country’s sectarian fires, and his announcement that Secretary of State John Kerry would embark on a diplomatic campaign — opened a risky new chapter in the president’s reluctant engagement with Iraq.

Having captured the presidency in part because of his opposition to the Iraq war and his promise to wind it down, Mr. Obama is now returning American soldiers to an unresolved conflict. After struggling to steer clear of the sectarian fault lines that divide Iraq, he is now plunging into yet another effort to unite a fractured country.

“We will be helping Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region and American interests as well,” a grim-faced Mr. Obama said to reporters in the White House briefing room, after meeting with his National Security Council.

The military advisers will have a number of missions, Pentagon officials said. They will try to determine whether, and which, Iraqi defense forces are capable and willing to stand up to the fighters from the militant group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

They will gather intelligence on how big a threat the group poses as well as which militant targets could potentially be struck if Mr. Obama decides to order airstrikes. And they will give the United States an assessment of the complex security situation in Iraq, which involves not only the militants, but also Sunni tribes, former Baathists and Shiite militias.

“They’re going to go in there and get us a little bit better sense of the state, the cohesiveness and the capability of Iraqi security forces,” said a senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The first few dozen of the 300 special operations forces are already on their way from bases in the region, officials said, and are expected to arrive in the next day or two. Some will be assigned to Iraqi Army headquarters in Baghdad, as well as to individual brigade headquarters.

Other advisers will staff two joint operations centers, which will be used to collate and share intelligence with Iraqi officers, and to do joint planning so that Iraqi forces can better pursue Sunni militants. One will be in Baghdad and the other in northern Iraq, expected in Kurdistan.

The military plan, administration officials said, was largely developed by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who, as a commander in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004, has street-level experience dealing with insurgencies in Iraq.

Administration officials said the crucial moment in Mr. Obama’s deliberations came Monday evening, after he returned from a weekend trip to Southern California and met with his national security team to review a menu of diplomatic and military options.

Mr. Obama, an official said, decided on the sequence of events, in which the United States would flood Iraq with intelligence gathering and surveillance, then send in military advisers, before drawing up a list of potential targets for strikes.

On Thursday, stepping up its reconnaissance over Iraq, the United States had 34 piloted and unmanned flights, officials said, double the number of such flights on Tuesday. The piloted flights have included F-18s from an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, as well as P-3 surveillance planes flying from bases in the region. 

The president, his aides said, was caught off guard not by the rise of the militant threat in Iraq, but by the speed with which the Iraqi Army crumbled in its resistance to the Sunni militants.

Some current and former intelligence officers echoed Mr. Obama’s warnings about the threat from ISIS. “It’s a problem that we haven’t seen since the towers went down on 9/11,” said Stephen R. Kappes, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Mr. Obama’s announcement also has implications for American policy in Syria, which so far has been shaped by the president’s reluctance to get heavily involved in a complex civil war. A senior official said Mr. Obama would not hesitate to strike militant targets on the Syrian side of the Iraq-Syria border.

“The president’s made clear time and again that we will take action as necessary, including direct U.S. military action if it’s necessary to defend the United States against an imminent threat,” the official said.

As military advisers flow to Iraq, Mr. Obama announced that Mr. Kerry would leave this weekend for Europe and the Middle East, where he will ask Arab leaders to use their influence to push for a multisectarian government in Iraq, where he is also expected to travel soon, officials said.

After a brief contact between American and Iranian officials about Iraq this week, Mr. Obama said Iran, as Iraq’s Shiite neighbor, could play a constructive role. But he warned that Iran would be a destructive force if it “came in as an armed force on behalf of the Shia.”

“An Iraq in chaos on their borders is not in their interests,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “Old habits die hard.”

While American officials would clearly prefer to see Mr. Maliki’s departure, given how he has fanned sectarian tensions, he presents them with a genuine quandary. Some worry that moving against him too obviously could backfire.

American officials are in touch with Sunni and Kurdish leaders, as well as with other Shiite officials, in the unspoken hope that rival leaders will step forward to form a governing coalition. But they acknowledge that Mr. Maliki may yet end up as the leader.

“The test is before him and other Iraqi leaders as we speak,” Mr. Obama said. “Regardless of what’s happened in the past, right now is a moment where the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance.”

As Mr. Obama considers airstrikes, he said he would continue to consult with Congress. For now, the White House does not consider the deployment of advisers to constitute “use of military force, ” said Caitlin Hayden, a National Security Council spokeswoman.

History hung heavily over the president’s remarks: He insisted the military advisers were not the vanguard of a larger American force, and he brushed off critics, some from the George W. Bush administration, who contend that had he left a larger residual force behind in Iraq in 2011, it would have prevented the chaos engulfing the country today.

“Recent days have reminded us of the deep scars left by America’s war in Iraq,” the president said. “What’s clear from the last decade is the need for the United States to ask hard questions before we take action abroad, particularly military action.”

Still, he concluded, “It is in our national security interest not to see an all-out civil war in Iraq.”