US Seeking to Create Ethnic, Religious Disputes in Region: Iraqi MP
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior Iraqi lawmaker deplored the US government’s “cruel policy” toward Middle Eastern countries and said Washington is seeking to create ethnic and religious disputes in the region.
“By interfering in West Asia and occupying Iraq in 2003, the US turned our region into an unstable region,” Mohammed Al-Ghabban told Tasnim.
The US invasion and interference led to the emergence of terrorist groups in regional countries, the Iraqi parliamentarian added.
“The terrorists from 80 countries occupied vast areas of Iraq and Syria with the US and Zionist support and posed a great danger not only to the two countries but also to the region and the world,” Ghabban said.
“The United States is seeking to create ethnic, religious and political disputes in the region through violent and unlawful policies in Syria and Iraq,” he stated.
In recent years, the Middle East has been plagued with Takfiri terrorist groups like Daesh (ISIL or ISIS), which are believed to have been created and supported by the West and some regional Arab countries.
Daesh militants made swift advances in much of northern and western Iraq over the summer of 2014, after capturing large swaths of northern Syria.
However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after top Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for fight against the militants, blunted the edge of Daesh offensive and later forced them to withdraw from the territories they had occupied.
In November 2017, the self-proclaimed caliphate of Daesh collapsed after Syrian and Iraqi armed forces and their allies managed to recapture the terror group’s last strongholds in the two Arab countries.
