On 25 June 2014, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman met with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to work out Iraqi Kurdistan’s accession to independence.

Shortly after, when delivering a speech before the Institute of Tel Aviv University for National Security Studies, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that Israel supported the creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

Ignoring the warnings from the Iraqi federal government of Nouri al-Maliki, the local Iraqi Kurdistan authorities exported to Israel oil stolen from the Kirkuk oil field [1]. The oil was channeled through a pipeline controlled by the ISIL, and ultimately through the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

[1] “Israel accepts first delivery of disputed Kurdish pipeline oil”, by Julia Payne, Reuters, 20 June 2014.