Iranian official:

Foreign sponsors attempting to delay defeat of terrorists

Rasa - A senior Iranian security official says foreign patrons of Takfiri terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria have turned to politicking to save the outfits from a looming defeat in the Arab countries.

News ID: 424461

Date: 21 October 2016 - 15:30

RNA - “Takfiri terrorists are declining toward their defeat in Iraq and Syria and thus their supporters have engaged in attempts to delay their defeat through political gambits,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani said on Friday.

“After their worn-out plans were exposed, the terrorists’ backers are seeking new approaches to change the course of their recurrent defeats,” he said, warning regional states and nations to be watchful of such efforts.

He hailed the back-to-back gains being made by Iraqi and Syrian militaries in the cities of Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, saying the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh faces disintegration as its members have turned on against its self-proclaimed leader Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Big rifts have also emerged between Daesh and other Takfiri terrorist groups, “which is a result of their leaders’ opportunism and hunger for power,” he said.

The Syrian government is engaged in battles, including in the northeastern city of Aleppo, against Takfiri terrorists and has vowed to rid the country of the terrorists.

In Iraq, too, the military and its allies are fighting Daesh, majorly in the northern city of Mosul, which the group has declared as its so-called headquarters.

Escaping complicity in war crimes through blame games

Elsewhere in his remarks, Shamkhani referred to the allegations made by some American officials that Iran has had a hand in the missile attacks recently carried out against US carriers in the Red Sea off the Yemeni coast and said such claims are made as distractions from complicity in the Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

“The US’s allies have been humiliated by the Yemeni people with repeated defeats in Yemen” and are attributing the responsibility for such incidents to Iran in a blame game meant to distract attention away from the “heavy responsibility” they hold for the war crimes in Yemen, he said.

Saudi Arabia has been waging war on Yemen since March 2015. According to UN figures released in August, at least 10,000 people have been killed in the war.

Many international rights groups have said Saudi Arabia’s military attacks on Yemen constitute war crimes and are prosecutable at international tribunals. Saudi Arabia has been receiving US support in the war.

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