Chairman of Iran’s Expediency Council has described as a “conspiracy” the acts of terror by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
At a Saturday meeting of the Expediency Council, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said ISIL's acts of terror target the entire region.
“Behind-the-scene players have complicated the dimensions of this conspiracy against the Iraqi people [by providing] unwavering technical, medical and political support for this group through some of the countries in and outside the region,” he said.
The veteran Iranian politician also emphasized that implementing divisive and terrorist Afghanistan-like policies in Iraq is among the goals of Iraq’s domestic and foreign enemies, who have now entered the scene as “saviors.”
Ayatollah Rafsanjani concluded that the only way to tackle the problems of the Islamic world and resolve the current crisis in Iraq is “internal integrity and unity as well as non-interference of foreigners.”
On June 10, the ISIL militants took control of the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s Nineveh Province. They later took control of the city of Tikrit, located about 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.
Over the past days, Iraqi armed forces have been engaged in fierce clashes with the terrorists, who have threatened to take their acts of violence to other Iraqi cities, including the capital.
However, their advance has been slowed down as Iraqi military troops and volunteer fighters have begun engaging them on several fronts, pushing the militants out of several areas they had earlier overrun.
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