Iranian MP: US, Regional Allies' Plot to Divide Iraq Foiled
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi underlined that the US and its allies in the Middle East have made attempts to divide Iraq, but in vain.
Speaking in a meeting with visiting secretary general of Hezbollah al-Nujaba, a major Iraqi Shiite resistance movement, Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi, in Tehran on Sunday, Boroujerdi highlighted Washington’s plots to sow discord in Iraq and lead the Arab country into breaking up, saying the US and Saudi Arabia have tried to show the ongoing war in Iraq as religious conflicts.
However, top Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have foiled the plots, the Iranian parliamentarian noted.
“We are opposed to the disintegration of Iraq and the country should remain integrated,” he said, adding that unity in Iraq is to the benefit of the whole Iraqi nation as well as the Islamic community.
Boroujerdi further emphases that despite pressures imposed from the US and its regional allies, plots to disintegrate Iraq has been foiled.
Sheikh Kaabi, for his part, pointed to the negative role played by the US in the fight against terrorism in Iraq and said Washington does not want the Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group to be defeated.
He also praised Iran’s supports for the Iraqi nation and said the Islamic Republic is the leader of the Muslim world.
Last year, a controversial US Congress bill was drafted, proposing the division of Iraq into three states and allows the Kurdish forces and the Sunni tribesmen to be armed directly without Baghdad’s approval.
The draft of the US annual defense bill, which was released on April 27, 2015 by the House Armed Services Committee, urged the US government to recognize separate Kurdish and Sunni states and provide them with at least 25 percent of the USD 715-million aid planned to be given to the Iraqi government to help it fight the Daesh terrorist group.
Iraq has been gripped by foreign-backed insurgency over the past years with Takfiri terrorists from various groups, including Daesh, currently controlling parts of the countries.
However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for fight against the militants, have blunted the edge of Daesh offensive.
