BAGHDAD: Iraq has begun bombing ISIS insurgents with help from a new intelligence center with staff from Russia, Iran and Syria, a senior parliamentary figure said Tuesday about cooperation seen as a threat to U.S. interests in the region.

The center has been operational for about a week, and it provided intelligence for airstrikes on a gathering of middle-level ISIS figures, Hakim al-Zamili, the head of parliament’s defense and security committee, told Reuters.

The new security apparatus based in Baghdad suggests the United States is losing clout in a strategic oil-producing Middle East, where it has been heavily invested for years.

Two weeks ago Russia started bombing anti-government rebels in neighboring Syria, including ISIS, to support its ally, President Bashar Assad, to the consternation of the West. Iraqi officials, frustrated with the pace and depth of the U.S. military campaign against ISIS, have said they will lean heavily on Washington’s former Cold War rival Russia in the battle against the Sunni militants.

Two Russian one-star generals are stationed at the intelligence center in Baghdad, according to an Iraqi official who asked not to be named.

Zamili, a leading Shiite politician, said each of the four member countries has six members in the intelligence sharing and security cooperation cell, which holds meetings in Baghdad’s fortified “Green Zone” that once housed the headquarters of the U.S. occupation.

“We find it extremely useful,” the Iraqi official said. “The idea is to formalize the relationship with Iran, Russia and Syria. We wanted a full-blown military alliance.”

Iran, a longtime Middle East adversary of the United States, already boasts deep influence in Iraq. Iranian military advisers help direct Baghdad’s campaign against ISIS, which aims to expand its self-proclaimed caliphate in the Middle East.

It is Russia’s participation in the intelligence hub that is causing the most Western anxiety.

Washington, with a history of close security links with Baghdad, now worries the intelligence center may foster closer Russian-Iraqi ties, particularly with respect to operations against Islamist militants, a U.S. security official said.

The United States believes the main point of the intelligence pact, which also covers operations in Syria, is to show that Russia is taking a greater role in the conflict in the neighboring country, said the official.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he would welcome Russian airstrikes against ISIS on Iraqi soil.

The Baghdad government, and allied Iranian-backed Shiite militias who are leading the fight against ISIS in Iraq, say the United States lacks the decisiveness and the readiness to supply weapons needed to eliminate militancy in the region. Washington denies such accusations.

However, the U.S. military Tuesday said the United States has intensified its airstrikes in the Ramadi area over the past 10 days and Iraqi ground forces are beginning to make progress. It also said conditions are now right for the Iraqi army to make a decisive assault on Ramadi and reclaim the provincial capital from ISIS fighters.

The statement was made by Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S.-led coalition. He said the Iraqi forces have advanced about nine miles in recent days and are in the city’s outer suburbs, with Iraqi F-16 fighter jets recently joining the operation in support of the ground troops.

“Iraqi ground forces recently trained by the [U.S.-led] coalition have been deployed around Ramadi in time for the decisive phase of this operation,” Warren said, referring to a counteroffensive that the Iraqi government announced in July but that has been stalled for numerous reasons, including ISIS’ effective use of improvised land mines.

U.S.-led airstrikes on ISIS militants who control a third of Iraq, have failed to turn the tide in Iraq’s conflict, which has sapped the OPEC oil producer’s finances and fuelled sectarian bloodletting.

Iraqi warplanes bombed a convoy this week that was thought to be carrying ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, based on information from the center, said Zamili. Security officials later said Baghdadi had not been in the convoy.

“We can get a lot of use from Russian intelligence, even if they don’t do airstrikes,” Zamili said.

Sami al-Askari, a former member of the Iraqi parliament and one-time senior adviser to ex-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Iraq was aware of the sensitivities of the new arrangement. “The Iraqi government wants to do this in a way that doesn’t look like they’re pushing the Americans away,” he said.