Iran’s Top General, DM Congratulate Iraq on Full Liberation of Mosul

Major General Baqeri praised the Iraqi government, nation and military forces for the success to recapture the city of Mosul in separate congratulatory messages to Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Defense Minister Erfan Mahmoud al-Hayali, Commander of Iraq's Badr Brigade Hadi al-Ameri, and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, the deputy head of the Arab country’s Popular Mobilization Units, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi.

Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi traveled to the northern city of Mosul on Sunday to declare its complete liberation some three years after the strategic city fell to Daesh terrorists.

Residents of Mosul poured to the streets on Sunday, dancing and celebrating, honking horns, playing national music, raising Iraqi flags and spraying water on each other.

After eight months of difficult urban warfare, Iraqi military forces on June 29 captured the Mosul mosque at the heart of the strategic northern city, which Daesh had declared its de facto capital.

In his message to Abadi, Iran’s Major General Baqeri described the liberation of Mosul as the manifestation of national unity and resistance, expressing confidence that close cooperation between the armed forces of Iran and Iraq would foil the plots by the “hegemonic and trans-regional powers and enemies of the Islamic community.”

In the message to Hadi al-Ameri, the senior Iranian general hailed Mosul liberation as a result of “historic acts of devotion” by the Hashd al-Shaabi forces, stressing the need for plans to maintain and strengthen the Popular Mobilization Units for the sake of Iraq’s future.

In another message to the Iraqi defense minister, the Iranian commander said the operation in Mosul marked a great victory against the Takfiri terrorists, the Zionist regime of Israel, and the regional reactionary regimes.

Separately, Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan congratulated his Iraqi counterpart and Hadi al-Ameri on the liberation of Mosul.

“This great victory which foiled the plots by the US and the usurping Zionist regime (of Israel) in Iraq will lead to the complete defeat of the strategy of proxy war waged by the hegemony in the region, God willing,” Dehqan said in the message to his Iraqi counterpart.

And in the message to Ameri, the Iranian defense minister expressed the hope that the brave Hashd al-Shaabi forces would preserve their preparedness and solidarity “in the post-Daesh era” to contribute to Iraq’s security and progress.

The recapture of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers north of Baghdad, would mark the effective end of Daesh in the Arab country.

Daesh stronghold in Syria’s Raqqa is also close to falling.

Daesh militants made swift advances in northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing swaths of northern Syria.

Afterwards, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa calling for the fight against the militants, blunted the edge of Daesh offensive and forced the terrorist group withdraw from much of the areas it had occupied.