Iraq’s prime minister is asking the United States to provide more military aid, including weapons, to help combat Iraq’s worst violence in five years. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is meeting with President Obama at the White House today. In an op-ed for The New York Times, al-Maliki wrote that he plans to “propose a deeper security relationship between the United States and Iraq.” Speaking Thursday at the Institute of Peace, al-Maliki asked for United States for help to fight terrorism.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: “We don’t tell the world to stand by us and support us. Rather, we have a right to ask of the world, because we are part of them, and because if what happens in Iraq is not dealt with, it will expand, and what happens in Syria, if not dealt with, will also expand, and what happens in any country where the virus of terrorism lives, this virus will spread.”

According to the State Department, at least 6,000 Iraqis have died in violence this year.