Iranian Foreign Minister: America Helped Create ISIS And Is Taking The Wrong Approach ... Again

Iran: America Helped Create ISIS And Is Taking The Wrong Approach ... Again

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq created the extremist group the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Further foreign military presence, he said, will only create new terrorists.

“If you look at the essence of ISIS, it’s the product of foreign invasion,” Zarif said during a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Foreign presence in any territory creates a dynamic for demagogues like ISIS to use the resentment in the population of being occupied.”

He noted that the Islamic State began with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an Islamist leader of the anti-American insurgency in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

“As a principle, we do not believe that injection of foreign forces, either air or ground, solves our problem," he said, adding that the Islamic State "will not be eradicated through aerial bombardment.” Instead, he said, foreign governments should enable Iraqis to fight against ISIS themselves and should cut off all outside support of ISIS.

“We continue to have serious doubts about the willingness and ability of the U.S. to seriously engage this menace across the board –- and not just pick and choose where to engage,” he said, adding that U.S. actions seem to be based on American constituencies rather than what’s best for the people of Iraq and the surrounding region.

Zarif said that the U.S. has been preventing peace in the region by “drawing red lines,” such as saying Iran should not be involved in the coalition against ISIS or Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should not be involved. Iran is an ally of Assad and is believed to have previously sent troops to combat the Syrian moderates and keep Assad in office.

A divided U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to arm and train Syrian moderates to fight ISIS, per President Obama's request. Zarif said the approach would be ineffective.

“People need to be realistic. The so-called Syrians moderates -- look at what’s happening on the ground -- they control no territory," he said. "They can have no influence in fighting against either ISIS or the Syrian government.”

The U.S. thus far has refused to align with Assad in the fight against the Islamic State because of human rights violations his regime has committed. Zarif said that makes fighting the Islamic State difficult. “Syria is either controlled by the government or by ISIS. The U.S. cannot effectively fight against both at the same time,” he said.

Diplomats from 26 nations and several international organizations gathered in Paris Monday to divide responsibilities for what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said will be an international assault on the Islamic State. Iran and Syria were not invited, although Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted that he rejected a back-channel U.S. offer of unspecified cooperation against the terrorist group.

In addition to having an ongoing strained relationship with the U.S., Iran, a predominantly Shiite nation, is enemies with Saudi Arabia, which is predominantly Sunni and a key ally of the U.S. in the coalition against the Islamic State. Kerry said Monday that the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had told him that if Iran attended the session in Paris, they would boycott it.

Zarif called the coalition to defeat ISIS a “coalition of repenters.” “Most participants in that meeting in one form or another provided support to ISIS … at the end of the day, creating a Frankenstein that came to haunt its creators,” he said. He accused nations of the coalition of providing financial support, safe transit and recruiting grounds for the Islamic State. He didn't name nations, but wealthy donors in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have helped fund the group, and Turkey has not stopped thousands of extremists from crossing into Syria.

Extremists, Zarif said, "do not fly into Iraq. They come on foot from somewhere, and they don’t come from Iran. You can look at the addresses, and I believe every location was [represented] around the table in Paris.”

Although Iran is not in the coalition against the Islamic State, Zarif said that it will continue to aid Iraq, upon request, in its fight against the group.

Before You Go

1
Twins Salma and Zahra Halane
The 16-year-old schoolgirls from Chorlton, Manchester, followed their brother who had also gone to fight in Syria. They are now married to ISIS fighters, and told a reporter for their local paper that they spend most of their time indoors, leaving only with their husbands. Both twins, the daughters of Somali refugees, had achieved excellent GCSE results, 23 grades A*-C between them at Whalley Range High School for Girls. A twitter account linked to one of the twins shows a woman in a burka, with an AK47. It appears the account has since been removed.
2
Khadijah Dare aka Muhajirah fi Sham
Khadijah Dare, a mother of one originally from Lewisham, has engaged in active recruitment of women for Isis. She left Britain in 2012 to live in Syria with her Swedish husband.Writing on Twitter under her name Muhajirah fi Sham, which means immigrant in Syria, Dare praised the killing of US journalist James Foley, saying: “Any links 4 da execution of da journalist plz. Allahu Akbar. UK must b shaking up ha ha. I wna b da 1st UK woman 2 kill a UK or US terorrist!(sic)”.In a recruitment video for the group, the 22-year-old can be seen firing an AK47, calling on Brits to come and fight. “Instead of sitting down and focusing on your families or focusing on your studies, you need to stop being selfish because time is ticking," she said.
3
Aqsa Mahmood aka Umm Layth
Umm Layth was a prolific tweeter until she was identified in the press as 20-year-old Glaswegian Aqsa Mahmood.In her tweets, she urged Muslim men and women who could not come to fight to instead commit terrorist atrocities at home, praising the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, the bombing of the Boston Marathon and the shooting of soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas. "If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself," she tweeted.Mahmood, who is now married to an Isis fighter, attended the prestigious Craigholme School and was studying radiography at Glasgow Caledonian University when she left for Syria. Her family reported her missing to police in November 2013.Despite praising al Qaeda terrorists and encouraging more attacks, her tweets betray her Westernised roots. One asks for someone to "make a Hijrah [pilgrimage] from Scotland already and bring me Irn-Bru.” She also tweeted with delight at receiving European food, including Pringles crisps and Nutella.
4
Al Khanssaa
A close friend of Aqsa and a Brit of Somalian heritage, Khanssaa is described on Twitter as the "cook of the house" in Raqqa where several girls live. She tweets them offering up Nutella pancakes. Unlike many of the other girls who have tweeted about how their families disapprove of their mission to Syria, Khanssaa said she is following in the footsteps of her father who left her family to fight a holy war, though she does not specify where.
5
Umm Anwar / Umm Farris
With the black flag of Isis as her profile picture, Umm Anwar, who also goes by the name Umm Farris, is one of the four British girls married to an Islamic State fighters who has only recently been identified by researchers. She is believed to be based in Raqqa, and recently said she was surprised to discover a ‘Yazidi slave girl’ from Iraq in a home she visited. As well as retweeting praise for Islamic State fighters and the Caliphate, she mentions shopping and joking with her friends in the city while her husband fights.
6
GreenBirds22
Though much of her account extols the virtue of jihad, the third member of the British girl gang in Raqqa peppers her tweets with English slang, like ‘ain’t’ and calls her fellow ISIS wives ‘babesss’. Going under the name 'Black Banners' on Twitter, where her profile picture includes Osama Bin Laden, she suggested she is the second wife of a fighterShe tweets about being “bored” in Raqqa and asks her friends repeatedly to meet up and visit her. Her twitter also includes retweets of beautiful pictures and Vines, including a sunset at the Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco, and a comedy sketch about accidentally dropping a cookie in milk.
7
UkhtiB
A close friend of Anwar, the pair joke about their shopping habits on Twitter, arrange lifts, drink smoothies and cook each other food. Her background is unclear, but she hints that her family disapprove of her being in Syria, tweeting: “Your family will be the biggest test for you once you make Hijrāh. They're either with you or without you.”Much of her feed consists of retweets of local fighters and of Islamic sayings, as well as graphic pictures of the dead from Iraq, Syria and Gaza.
8
Umm Talib
The fourth member of the group of girls in Raqqa, who calls herself Qad Af-Iahal Shuhada, has a son with her, and is believed to be from London or the south of England, having tweeted about leaving her Oyster card in the pocket of her abaya, a type of female Muslim covering, while she put it in the watch. A foodie, she recently retweeted a recipe for Vietnamese chicken with avocado and lemongrass spring rolls, then messaged her friend to tell her she was cooking for them. Other tweets include a picture of the girls out for dinner in Raqqa, eating hummus and pita with chilli and vegetables.
9
Umm Khattab
One of the most prolific tweeters amongst the women in Isis is a British 18-year-old who goes under the twitter handle @UmmKhattab, who has tweeted about previously being based in the town of Manbij, close to Aleppo, tweeting sunsets from the rooftops, but has recently moved to Raqqa. "Best thing ive done in my 18 years in this world is come to the blessed land of shaam and leave Britain the land of kuffar," she posted in June.And she tweeted a dim view of the UK's plan to strip returning jihadists of their citizenship. "Uk government are funny im not returning to ur dirty society which has no moral values y'all r all uncivilised and need islam to liberate u," she wrote.
10
Sally Jones aka Umm Hussain al-Britani
Formerly a rock musician in a local band, the 45-year-old mother-of-two from Chatham, Kent, is believed to have converted to Islam to marry a British Isis fighter Junaid Hussain. The couple are reported to have moved to Raqqa, leaving her children behind.Her Twitter account under the name Umm Hussain al-Britani, contains threats like "You Christians all need beheading with a blunt knife and stuck on the railings at Raqqa... Come here I'll do it for you."

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